


Concrete Angel

by VelvetRose529



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Cutting, Dark, Depressing, Depression, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Haruno Sakura-centric, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, Physical Abuse, Probably Psychological Abuse as well, Rape, Rape Recovery, Self-Harm, Seriously All The Trigger Warnings, Sexual Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Triggers, You are watching my brain devolve, i can't believe i'm posting this, will add more tags as needed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-14 01:14:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11772408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VelvetRose529/pseuds/VelvetRose529
Summary: Team Seven is full of dark pasts. Some are more obvious than others. They say the ones who smile the widest have the most pain in their eyes. Perhaps that's more true than people realize. But for Sakura, her secrets aren't just to protect her friends from her pain. They're an attempt to protect herself. And what's left of her family.In other words: Velvet is a cruel human being to everyone. Yes I got the title from the Martina McBride song.





	1. Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> The tags are to be believed, if any of the above could trigger you, I urge you to turn back now. This is your last warning, this gets dark, and it gets dark fast. I don't think I wrote this with the intent to be shared, but reading it again I think I'd like to. But it is terribly dark and depressing and can get graphic sometimes.

Sakura slowly made her way to the bridge where she was to meet up with her team for their first real training session. Last time she had met with them, they had taken their Sensei’s test. He had called it ‘The Bell Test’. They thought they had failed, but after proving to their Sensei that they were one and cared more about each other’s needs than anything else, they had passed.

Her team consisted of four people. First, was Naruto Uzumaki, a slightly dim-witted (Okay, she would admit it, extremely dim-witted) blonde haired boy who had barely passed the Genin exam. She honestly didn’t actually know how he had passed, but he had the headband. She would never admit it, but after the test yesterday, she felt he had some strong potential as a shinobi. Of course, however, he would probably assume she liked him if she ever said it, so she didn’t.

Next was Sasuke Uchiha, a mysterious, raven haired boy, whose hair stuck up in the back like a chicken’s butt. When asked, she would admit to having a crush on him at one point, but that had ended pretty abruptly due to circumstances she would never disclose to anyone, even if offered a million ryo. He obviously had strong potential as a shinobi, and was fueled by hatred for someone, not that he would let anyone in on that information. And while there was part of her that didn’t think it was healthy to live your life for revenge, she decided it wouldn’t be worth the argument.

Next was their Sensei, Kakashi Hatake. She didn’t know much about him, the man had refused to follow his own parameters when introducing himself, though what she observed yesterday was that he had skill. He was certainly a skilled Jonin, though he was late for the test yesterday, and on the day they had first met him, not to mention that he seemed to prefer his perverted books over everything else. However, she had yet to see him on a mission, so she couldn’t say it for sure.

Lastly, there was her, Sakura Haruno. Sasuke found her annoying, Naruto had a crush on her, and Kakashi Sensei really didn’t seem to notice her all that much. She had barely started as part of a team, and she was already the weakling of her squad. She had pink hair, and tried her best to be happy and smile all the time, and tried her best to please everyone, except herself. Nobody knew what Sakura was hiding, and nobody would ever think to imagine it either. It was something that made her wonder if falling to the wayside was actually a good thing. She didn’t want to be noticed too much in case anyone learned about her secret.

Sakura was the first to arrive, because her mother had sent her out of the house as quickly as possible. This was a normal routine. So normal, in fact, that her days of missing lunch because of it had stopped because her lunch was the first thing her mother would have finished. Mainly because people had started to ask questions. Every morning, Sakura left her house in a hurry, without luxury of slowing until she’d reached the outskirts of the village. She supposed it was overkill, but she wanted to be as far away as possible.

She laid back on the grass, which was still damp with dew, and watched the clouds go by. Happy moments such as these were hard to come by, ever since her mother had married someone new. At the time, it had been three years since her fathers death (She was 7 when it happened), and Sakura had no hatred for her mother for seeing another guy. She deserved to be happy after all. In fact, she had approved of the new guy at first, he hadn’t made Sakura feel at all uncomfortable. They had actually gotten along. But that all changed the minute the two were married.

He changed drastically. The first two weeks were alright, she’d taken ti calling it the honeymoon phase of the marriage, but Sakura had started to notice that he angered easily. This didn’t worry her at first, until he started to hit her mother. Sakura worried for her mothers safety, so she confronted him, just like a true would-be shinobi. He frightened her, but the two of them struck a deal. A deal that would soon be her worst nightmare.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

_“Alright missy, you care about your mother’s safety, do you?” Sakura nodded meekly at him. All she cared about was her mother’s safety. Her mother was all she had left. “Alright then, well if you want to protect your mother so badly, you’re going to have to work for it.”_

_“I’ll do whatever you want. I promise.” He nodded at the ten year old. He already knew exactly what he wanted from the girl. If she had known, however, she’d never have agreed to his terms._

_“Well, what I want is simple. You’ll do whatever I say, no complaints. No arguments. Anything and everything. Got it?” She nodded again, and he walked away. It couldn’t be too bad, right? She figured it meant chores, excessive amounts of manual labor. Things that, while it would seem ridiculous to have a young girl do, she could likely do them because of her training at the academy and she could pass off as more training._

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

He’d kept to his word, but if only Sakura had known what his words really meant. What he really wanted from her, what he really wanted her to do. Perhaps she would have gone to her mother from the start. Or maybe her teacher, Iruka Sensei. Or somebody else. Anybody else. But she was in too deep for it to end now. She had to protect her mother at all costs, and all the while her mother probably thought she was protecting her. But that was the way she wanted it. She was taking the beatings instead of her mother, and that was okay. It was okay because she’d be getting worse on missions so it didn’t matter. Her mother was a civilian, she wasn’t equipped to handle physical abuse.

Tears formed in Sakura’s eyes. The deal had been made over a year ago, and now she was stuck where she was. He had bound her to secrecy. If she were to tell anyone, he’d do to her mother what he did to her, and Sakura couldn’t allow that. And if her mother outed him, he might very well kill them both. As long as she followed his strict instructions, her mother was safe, and he wouldn’t be as cruel. And she preferred that to the alternative. She may be a Shinobi but he was a retired one. He was older and stronger, she couldn’t take him on. And while somedays she may prefer being dead, she wasn’t about to put that on her mother.

The rules were simple enough. If she was late returning home (5:30 every day, missions being an exception because it would raise too much suspicion with her team, but she had to tell him what day she expected to be back, and she was to be no later than that), in bed by 8:30 so he could do as he pleased, and no resistance. If she resisted, there were consequences. She hadn’t felt or seen those consequences yet, and she never intended to. She wasn’t sure she really wanted to feel those consequences. Sakura didn’t know what he told her mother they did at night, but whatever it was it wasn’t what was actually happening. If that were the case… Her mother would definitely look at her differently.

“Sakura-Chaaaan!” She was pulled from her train of thought by an over-enthusiastic blonde, and she had to admit she was a little bit glad. She had started to wallow in her own self pity, which she hated doing. It was depressing, and she hated being depressed. Which was kind of ironic, but she didn’t think about it too much. She stood up and shook her head a couple of times to rid herself of the thoughts, and forced a big smile at Naruto, one she hoped he wouldn’t notice was fake.

“Good morning Naruto-Kun. You’re early.” He had managed to arrive before Sasuke, and that was a feat in and of itself. Said raven-haired boy preferred being early, hoping to get extra training time. Not that their currently perpetually late Sensei would be providing that. The last time they met, they all arrived at the same time, but Naruto was prone to being late. He even had times in the academy where he didn’t show up at all.

“I’m excited, Sakura-Chan! Today is our very first day of training, and I can’t wait! What do you think Kakashi-Sensei will teach us today!?” Sakura shrugged at her teammate. She really wasn’t sure what to expect, and she wasn’t spending time wondering. She’d dropped the habit after she’d spend all day worrying about what her father would do to her.

“Oh... I-”

“The basics, probably.” Sakura turned her head ever so slightly, and saw Sasuke Uchiha walking towards them. “If it’s not a mission.” She kept her forced smile, and greeted Sasuke the same way she greeted Naruto. With a simple good morning. He returned it plainly, no emotion in his voice, and sat down. While they had all arrived relatively on time, they knew they would be waiting a while, so they all sat down as well.

Sakura spent her time picking grass blades, and blowing them into the wind, hoping her ‘father’ would not be home when she arrived. She knew that it was impossible, yet she still hoped every day that it would be different. Naruto paced, impatiently waiting for their Sensei to show up, and Sasuke just sat there. He had his hands clasped in front of his face, and his elbows on his knees. The same position he sat in when they introduced themselves. At that moment, there was a small ‘poof’ sound and Kakashi-Sensei was standing in front of them.

“Good morning, kids.” They all glared at him for that, but he didn’t change what he said. “Sorry I’m late, I got sidetracked on the road of life.” He was instantly barraged with screams of ‘liar!’ and he sighed. He really shouldn’t have expected much else from his students. “Today we will be starting our missions. I’ve already received our first one from the Hokage. We’ll be cleaning up trash along the river.”

“What? That’s so lame! I thought we’d be getting real missions!”

“These _are_ real missions, Naruto. D-Ranked missions. Now lets get going.” Sakura and Sasuke nodded and got up, Naruto groaned but eventually joined the three of them and headed off towards the river.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

They spent all day cleaning up along the river. Naruto wasn’t the only one who thought spending all day cleaning up trash along the river was stupid. It was clear that Sakura and Sasuke weren’t huge fans of the idea either, but they knew better than to argue. Sasuke because he just knew there wasn’t a point. Sakura because even the thought of talking back made her worry for her own safety. Which was ridiculous because the only time Kakashi-Sensei was a threat to them was the day of the bell test and even that hadn't gone much farther than what could be considered Jonin-level pranks.

Hell, the guy had spent the entire time reading his book.

They were leaving the mission briefing room, when she checked her watch. It said 6:00. She cursed under her breath as she realized she was ridiculously late and her father didn’t know she would be doing a D-Rank mission. Without proper warning… It didn’t matter what kept her from being home on time. She was late, she would suffer the consequences.

“Damnit…” This would not be good. She had to find the quickest way home, and she was currently very glad she’d taught herself how to roof hop like the rest of the leaf shinobi. She jumped up onto the nearest roof, grimacing as she rolled it when she landed (the joys of distracted ninja jumping), and turned to say a quick good-bye before heading home, ignoring the pain shooting up her ankle as she stepped. She arrived at the front of her house at 6:10. When she arrived at home, her father was standing there waiting for her.

“You’re late. You know what the punishment is for being late.” She nodded at her father, and stood there, preparing for her punishment. He lifted his hand and smacked her once across the face. “UPSTAIRS!” He bellowed at her. She nodded and ran up the stairs, still ignoring her throbbing ankle. Her father followed close behind, but he had prepared his weapon of choice for her punishment. Along with the usual nightly routine, she was to be whipped. One whip for every minute she was late. Which meant that tonight would be forty whips.

She prepared herself, lifting up the back of her shirt, so as not to ruin it. Even if it did dull the pain slightly, she couldn’t afford to replace the shirt. Her father arrived in her room, and began his punishment. With the first whip, she had to fight the urge to cry out. As each ‘crack’ rang in her ear, she was able to force the pain from her mind. She ignored it for as long as she could, and when the final ‘crack’ rang out, she couldn’t do it anymore. The pain flooded her entire body, and silent tears fell from her eyes.

“And because you were so late, I’ll make your night a living hell.” Her eyes widened. She was about to protest but he stopped her before she could start. “Unless, of course, you want me to take it out on your mother instead.” She screamed at him, she couldn’t let him hurt her mother!

“NO! No... I’ll be ready. 8:30.” He nodded at the little pink haired girl. She was trembling with fear and pain. She couldn’t help but think about how Naruto and Sasuke went home to empty houses. She used to feel badly for both of them, Naruto first because he’d never had parents. Sasuke after the massacre. But now… Well she never thought she’d be jealous of two of the saddest people in Konoha.

“Damn right you will, you little bitch.” She nodded, and went to her closet to dispose of the clothes she was currently wearing. Then pulled on the outfit he had recently purchased for her to wear. It was skimpy and made of black and pink lace. She looked down, remembering when he had given it to her.

_“Sakura, darling, I got a present for you! Come downstairs!” She ran down the stairs, shocked at what she was hearing. But at the same time she was too afraid to not at least look excited. He didn’t like it when her emotions didn’t match what he wanted them to be. It was easier to just pretend like he wasn’t a monster at these times._

_“What did you get me?” He clucked his tongue at Sakura and frowned._

_“What have I told you before?” She bowed her head in apology._

_“What did you get me, daddy?” The word felt like poison in her mouth, she hated calling her ‘father’ that. She had reserved that for her birth father. Her REAL father. And now he expected her to use it all the time, no other word for dad was acceptable. Even when they had company, but especially when it was her fathers buddies. She could get away with it when her mother had friends over, but when he had friends over… Kami, she hated when her fathers friends were there._

_The only way to put it was that sometimes they liked to join in on the ‘fun’. At least… If her mother wasn’t home. And somehow she never was when they were there._

_“I got you this, darling.” He lifted the black and pink lace from the bag. Her eyes widened at what he was holding, but she tried to make it seem like they were wide with excitement. It worked. “I knew you’d love it! I want you to wear it tonight, and every night from now on, got it?” She nodded._

She heard a noise, shocked. Wasn’t it early for him? Damnit, that wouldn’t end well. It never did when he was early, that meant she was getting worse than the last time... usually. Would she even be able to walk tomorrow? Between the whipping and the ankle, not to mention what he was about to do to her, and she didn’t even want to think about that.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Her ankle was throbbing, her back was stinging, and she’d never felt so violated before in her life. This wasn’t the first time she had ever been late, and each time she swore she would never be late again. But this was the latest she’d ever been. Before her record had been ten minutes, and at the time she was certain it couldn’t get any worse than that. The things he had done to her this time though were too horrible to recount. She had bandaged her injured ankle and did her best to tend to the wounds on her back but it wasn’t enough, she couldn’t even find the energy to get up and change. In the end, she curled up in a ball, under the covers, and did her best to fall asleep, praying that tomorrow she’d feel better.

The next morning she woke up, and found she was probably in even more pain than before. She was sore all over, and yet she still had to go to training today. She changed, grabbed a large roll of bandage from her drawer, and went downstairs. It would be at least another fifteen minutes until _he_ would wake up, so she asked her mother for help bandaging her back.

“Sweetheart,” Sakura smiled a little at that. It made her feel like maybe she still had a piece of her innocence left, even though she knew she didn’t. “I’m so sorry I got you into this, but I’m terrified of what he’ll do if I try to end it. He might actually kill us both… I can’t risk that. Even dead… I don’t know what I’d do with myself if I knew I had gotten you killed.” It was amazing how calm her mother sounded when she knew just how scared they both were. “I’m so sorry…” Sakura smiled at her mother as she finished bandaging her. Her mother didn’t know everything he did to her, just that he would beat her. How he managed that Sakura had no idea, but she preferred that to the alternative.

“Mom, it’s alright. Don’t worry about me, I’m strong. And I’m a Genin now. Remember that.” Suddenly, they heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Sakura’s mother handed Sakura her lunch and gently nudged her out of the house. Sakura ran, once again ignoring the pain in her ankle, but this time also ignoring the pain in her back, until she reached the training grounds. And she was shocked to see Kakashi-Sensei was already there.

“You- you’re early Kakashi-Sensei!” She realized he was holding something. It looked like he was holding a pair of crutches. She wondered who they were for, then remembered her injured ankle. That was the only reason she could think of, but she didn’t even know that he could tell she'd gotten hurt. But… Did that mean they were for her?

“I brought these for you. I noticed you injured your ankle yesterday, so I wanted you to use these until you recover. I still want you to walk on it, just try not to put so much weight on the injured ankle, alright?” She nodded and took the crutches, still surprised that he had even noticed that she had been injured.

“Thank you, Sensei.”

“If you wish to go home now, though… It’s just going to be training for today. Light sparring, or whatever the boys want to do, so you don’t have to stay. Wouldn’t want to cause that ankle any more damage after all.” Sakura started to protest quickly before she realized just how suspicious that looked.

“No! I mean… It’s fine. I can watch. Still better than sitting around doing nothing at home, right?” Even though she was certain her father wouldn’t allow that, and she could swear her voice was still giving away the fear of the just the idea of going home. Kakashi-Sensei raised an eyebrow at her, and looked like he wanted to say something but then elected not to. Instead, he pulled out his book and began to read, no surprise, while Sakura laid back and watched the clouds. She used to do it with her father all the time. It was calming, and sometimes very silly, depending on what she saw. She felt a tear fall down her face, but she wiped it quickly when she heard footsteps.

“Kakashi-Sensei! You’re early!” She heard Naruto’s voice, but didn’t hear Sasuke’s. She sat up slowly, the injuries on her back protesting with every movement, but she hid it behind a smile. When she looked, she realized Sasuke and Naruto were walking together. Naruto, as bouncy as ever, and Sasuke slowly and with his hands shoved in his pockets as usual. She greeted the two of them as warmly as possible. Sasuke was the first to notice something was wrong, however, likely because he saw the crutches.

“What happened to you?” He gestured towards the crutches with his head, his hands remained in his pockets. She scratched the back of her head, looking slightly embarrassed. In her mind, however, she just hoped that would be the only thing he noticed. She wasn’t worried about Naruto, she knew he likely wouldn’t notice if she was in a full body cast. However, she was also pretty sure Sasuke wouldn’t even care.

“When I jumped up on the roof yesterday, I didn’t land properly.” He nodded, accepting the answer, and turned to Kakashi-Sensei. Sakura was glad that he didn’t notice anything else, and kept quiet.

“What are we doing today?” All Sasuke really cared about was training, as was evident by his question.

“Today will simply be training. Whatever you boys think will help you the best. Sakura won’t be doing much of that today, so it’s just us three.” Sasuke and Naruto both seemed to accept that answer and went over to Kakashi to discuss what they wanted to do, and Sakura tuned them out. Not like she needed to hear whatever they were saying. She wasn’t training today, she was just avoiding her house.

Time went by faster than she expected it to. Watching the spars between Naruto and Sasuke and Kakashi was interesting to say the least. But she wasn’t going to risk a repeat of last night. This time, Sakura kept a close eye on her watch, and when it was 5:10, she said goodbye to everyone.

“I have to be home by 5:30. Thanks for the crutches Kakashi-Sensei!”

“Tomorrow is a day off, so I’ll see you the day after!” Sakura was both glad and terrified about tomorrow. She ignored the part of her that was terrified, however, and smiled at Kakashi-Sensei. She couldn’t let him see she was scared of her own home. She had to protect her mother.

Hell, she was also protecting herself.

“Thanks Kakashi-Sensei!” And with that, she left. When she got home, she heard a yell that caused her to flinch. She didn’t even have to wonder who had been the source of the yell. She didn’t even want to look at him, but she knew if she didn’t, she’d get in trouble.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing!?” His face was contorted into anger, and he was pointing an angry finger at her, and she tried to hide her fear. He’d never had an issue with cursing at the girl, and she had gotten used to the vulgar language. She hated the screaming, however.

“What do you mean, daddy?” The word often came out automatically now, though it still disgusted her to say it to him. She honestly felt like she was swallowing back vomit as she said it. He was in no way a true father figure and didn’t deserve such a name. He demanded it, and there were repercussions if she didn’t use it.

“Those things! Under your arms!” She looked down at her crutches. “They’re a sign of weakness! No daughter of mine is going to look weak! Get rid of them!” She nodded, though she was not his daughter in any way and refused to acknowledge herself as such, and took them out from under her arms. She walked outside and stashed them under the bush. She did her best to walk back in, but she had a slight limp.

“Is this better, daddy?” He nodded approvingly, ignoring her limp. Not that she expected him to care about her limp. He never cared when she was injured or sick before, why would he care now?

“Upstairs. Now. Don’t change yet.” She nodded, she wouldn’t eat tonight if she didn’t listen. Then again, she probably wouldn’t eat tonight anyway. Her mother wasn’t downstairs, which meant she was already in her room. This obviously meant she’d been told she didn’t need to feed Sakura today. Her ‘father’ probably told her that he would do it.

“Yes, daddy.” She went upstairs and waited on the bed for him. She spent the time trying not to think about what was about to happen to her. If she ignored it, it was easier to deal with. And as she watched him walk into her bedroom, she tried to think of something, anything else, just not what was about to happen to her.


	2. Lies

Her ankle should have only taken a few days to heal. It wasn’t a bad sprain after all. But because she wasn’t allowed to use the crutches in the house, a week had gone by and her ankle was still not fully healed. She made her way to training again one morning, forcing herself to go without the crutches despite the pain. If Kakashi-Sensei suspected something…

She couldn’t risk anyone finding out the truth.

She forced herself to keep up the act. To pretend like she was fine. Because it was safer for everyone involved if no one else knew the truth. She made it to the training grounds, an saw she was the last of her team to arrive. She was still earlier than Kakashi-Sensei but both Sasuke _and_ Naruto. She sighed, but put on her happiest face and approached them.

“Good morning Naruto-Kun, good morning Sasuke-Kun.” They both looked up, and she got an enthusiastic response from the blonde. Her dark haired teammate simply gave her his usual nod in response. She laid back on the ground, looking up at the sky as she liked to do. Kakashi wasn’t likely to be there for a few hours, and the more rest she got the better. Perhaps she could take initiative and train on her own but she never got enough rest at home. She was going to take advantage of this.

About an our later there was a noise and she looked up to see Kakashi-Sensei waving at them. She joined Naruto in his screams of ‘liar’ when he attempted to give them some lame excuse for his lateness. She knew it lacked the emotion that Naruto put into it, but the more she pretended like everything was fine, the more it felt like it was fine. And it helped in the facade of normalcy, so it didn’t hurt.

“Is it training again, today?” She looked over at Sasuke, who looked more bored than anything else. She was trying to read his statement, figure out if he wanted to train or if he was annoyed that they weren’t going on more missions. But before she could work out what she thought he wanted, Kakashi nodded.

“I’ll try and get us some missions tomorrow, alright?” The group nodded. “For now… Naruto why don’t you spar with Sakura, and Sasuke why don’t you spar with me?” Sakura didn’t miss the glare Naruto gave Kakashi, but it seemed like she was the only one who noticed. But no one in the group missed Naruto’s outburst.

“How come you never spar with me Kakashi-Sensei? Do you like them better, or something!?” Sakura tensed at the sudden yelling and anger coming from the blonde. There was something in there that was different, and it rubbed Sakura the wrong way. She immediately went into her panic mode from home, something she hope went unnoticed by the group. Kakashi turned to Naruto calmly and started to explain, but passed a glance towards Sakura that no one caught, not even the pink haired girl.

“I’m not trying to play favorites, Naruto. If that’s how you feel than Sasuke why don’t you spar with Sakura, and Naruto I’ll spar with you? Is that better?” The blonde grinned, and nodded. Sasuke looked like he wanted to protest but Kakashi gave him a look before even one word could leave his mouth. It was like their Sensei knew what Sasuke was going to do before he even did it.

“Come on.” She faced him and nodded, and they stepped away for their spar.

It was fairly normal. It was all taijutsu, Kakashi-Sensei didn’t let them use ninjutsu in their spars because it was too dangerous. Sasuke could use fire style, and while Naruto’s only real ninjutsu just made more versions of himself that could fight, it was still an unfair advantage. So it was all hand to hand combat for them. Which was especially good for her as her taijutsu wasn’t the greatest. Average at best when you considered her own physical strength (or lack thereof). And Naruto’s was abysmal so it was useful training for them.

Every attempt at making some kind of connection with Sasuke was met with a quick retaliation. He would catch her or block her with ease, while she wasn’t nearly as good. The spar continued for a decent amount of time when she attempted to kick at him with her still somewhat injured ankle and he grabbed it. It wasn’t overly aggressive, though potentially unnecessarily so, and it hurt. A lot.

She hissed and fell, with Sasuke letting go quickly. She grabbed at her ankle, as if hoping grabbing it would do something to dull the pain pulsing through her body from the point of impact. Obviously that wouldn’t actually do much of anything but she sure did seem like she was hoping it would. As much as it hurt though, she needed to make it seem like she was alright, she didn’t want to worry anyone on the team. She made as if to stand but felt a hand on her shoulder. A gloved one.

She glanced up, how had Kakashi-Sensei gotten to them so fast? She looked back down at her ankle, not really sure what she was supposed to say here. The ankle should have been healed by now, this was going to raise questions. Questions she wasn’t entirely sure she could answer well enough to avoid suspicion.

“What happened?” She needed to think of something, because the truth was definitely going to raise questions.

“I- I don’t- I mean- I thought it was- It just hurt-” That… Went well.

“Full sentences might be more helpful, Sakura.” She looked up at Sasuke who, even if only for a split second, looked concerned. But it was so quick it could very well have been her imagination playing tricks on her. She immediately looked back down at the ground, avoiding contact with everyone there.

“I should go-” She tried to stand again, but Kakashi was still stopping her. Still had his hand on her shoulder, holding her down. “Kakashi-Sensei-”

“That ankle should have healed by now.”

“Yeah… Weird right?” She was still avoiding eye contact. Trying to play it off as something weird she didn’t understand, despite knowing exactly why it hadn’t healed yet.

“You were using the crutches all of the time, correct?”

“Of c-course I was Ka-Kakashi-Sensei.” She could practically feel the look her Sensei was giving her right now. Sure she was lying, and it was a crap lie, but that didn’t mean a look was going to get her to tell him the truth. Because the truth was both a really long story, and one she would be telling only over the dead body of her step-father.

“Sakura. I can tell you’re lying to me right now.”

“You have no proof.” She knew that wasn’t going to help her cause but it was the only answer she could give without it sounding like an obvious lie.

“Sakura.”

“I’m fine, Kakashi-Sensei. I’m sure I can walk now. Not that I’ll know unless you let me up.” He lifted his hand slowly, looking ready to catch her in case she fell again. She stood up and took a couple of steps. She could walk, yes, but it hurt more than before. Not that she was going to let anyone on her team in on that fact.

“Should we keep going with training?” Kakashi looked over his students and shook his head, deciding to call it for the day. Sure, it wasn’t necessarily what they would want but… He’d be seeing them again tomorrow anyway.

“Can we go out for ramen?” Sakura and Sasuke looked over at Naruto, of course he would ask that. But when both of their stomachs growled at the same time they looked over at Kakashi, who seemed to be smiling under his mask. Judging by the look he was giving them, his stomach had growled as well.

“Why not?”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Kakashi did enjoy spending time with his team. His genin were precious to him, and with two of them parentless, at least he could ensure that they were eating when he went out with them. But he couldn’t help but find himself somewhat distracted today, distracted enough that he didn’t even get a chance to bow out and leave the kids with the bill. In fact, it was quite the opposite and he ended up paying after the kids had left.

After leaving money for Teuchi, and a little extra just to be nice, he left the stand. Hands in his pockets. He couldn’t help but think about what had happened on the training grounds that day, he was wondering why Sakura’s injury from last week hadn’t healed yet. Generally, a bad roll would cause a sprain that would take, maybe, two or three days to heal. Had she been using the crutches as head suggested, it should have healed by now.

So why in the world was his female student in so much pain today?

He had a feeling there were things the girl wasn’t sharing, but was it even his place to ask? He was only her Sensei, it wasn’t necessarily his duty to worry about what she was doing with her time when she wasn’t with him. She wasn’t like Sasuke or Naruto, the girl had a family to take care of her. They were a civilian family, but a family nonetheless. He had no reason to concern himself with what she did when she was at home.

But it had affected her performance in training today. Had actually cut it short as he didn’t want to aggravate the apparently unhealed injury. As he walked back towards their training ground, wanting to go to the memorial stone for a while, he couldn’t help but frown as he thought about why it hadn’t healed. What reason did the girl have to not listen to his advice about the crutches when she was out of his sight?

Sakura Haruno was a mystery.

He glanced back in the direction his genin had gone of in after leaving him at the ramen stand. Was the girl having issues at home that he needed to worry about? Was there something he would actually need to involve himself in? He turned back in the direction he was walking, shaking his head to himself. Surely he was just imaging problems that weren’t actually there, the joys of shinobi paranoia.

But that still didn’t explain her explosive reaction to the prospect of going home early last week.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Only a week later Sakura was sparring with Kakashi-Sensei, while Sasuke and Naruto were sparring with each other. It was while this was going on that a man in an animal mask, a bird of some sort that no one could place, arrived at the training ground. The sparring stopped abruptly as everyone looked at the strange man heading towards them. He was obviously a member of the ANBU Black Ops. Kakashi was about to say something when the Black Ops man spoke Sakura’s name, causing the whole team to face her.

“Sakura Haruno?” Sakura took a few steps towards him, extremely nervous. The man relaxed his body a bit, and crouched down, trying his best to put the girl at ease, but there isn’t much you can do to calm someone who has never seen an ANBU before. He couldn’t use his face to calm the girl, because it was behind the animal face. She gulped and spoke up.

“That’s me.” His face, constantly hidden behind the mask, fell slightly at the news he had to relay to the young girl. He was now somewhat glad his face was hidden, his facial expression would just upset her more. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to control what he looked like. He came right out and said it, the longer he took to say it the worse the reaction would be, he was certain.

“I’m sorry to inform you, but there was an accident. Your mother is dead.” Sakura gasped, and fell to her knees. She pulled her arms around her body. She felt like she was drowning, she couldn’t think, she couldn’t breathe. She thought she could hear voices behind her, but she couldn’t quite make out what was being said. She thought she felt a hand on her shoulder, but she didn’t quite register it.

“NO! No, you’re lying, she’s not dead... SHE’S NOT DEAD!!!” She got up, shocking the person who had been trying to comfort her, and ran as fast as she could. She kept thinking: he broke his promise. He swore he wouldn’t hurt her. THEY HAD A DEAL DAMNIT! She opened the front door and saw her dad sitting there, fake remorse on his face.

“You LYING BASTARD! You SWORE she’d be safe if I did what you told me to and YOU KILLED HER!” Tears were streaming down her face and her father pulled her into a hug, but she pushed him away. She was disgusted by him. She couldn’t even figure out why he was feigning remorse or pretending to be comforting right now. He’d already proven he didn’t care. “Get off of me! You promised!”

“It was deemed an accident, and you can’t prove otherwise. And if you tell anyone, who do you think they’ll believe? An adult? Or some stupid, whiny, kid who wasn’t even there?” She looked up at him. He was right, he’d worm his way out of it, like he always did. The man had a knack for keeping his secrets, secret. But she had one good thing out of this. She wouldn’t have to be his little slave anymore, she was free from their deal.

“Well the deal is off. I don’t have to listen to you anymore.” She was so happy about that little detail she could cry, but she would wait until she got upstairs. She was about to walk up to her room. Unfortunately he had other ideas, and spoke words that made her stop in a dead halt.

“Yes you will. This is my house now.” She stopped in her tracks. She turned and faced him, shaking her head slightly. Partly out of fear, and partly out of disbelief. “I can do whatever I want, and if you tell anyone, it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”

“You wouldn’t…” She backed up a few steps. He nodded at her. Malice in his eyes. She’d never seen him so scary before, not even while he was... with her in her room. “Okay... daddy.” She was too scared to not use his favorite name. He smiled at her and she tried not to vomit at the sight of his sick face.

“That’s my girl.” She trembled at his voice, and went upstairs to her room as fast as possible. She just needed to escape from him right now, there was no way he’d touch her. Not yet. If he tried... She wasn’t sure what she would do. She just knew she couldn’t handle that yet.

The next day was the funeral. Sakura stood with her father and her team. She was shocked to see such a solemn face on Sasuke. Sure he’d lost his family but still, he almost looked like he’d just lost his clan again. Naruto as well, looked like he was looking at his parents funerals, though he’d never met them. He was never like this. After the funeral her father leaned towards her ear, speaking in a tone so low even she could barely hear him.

“You get one week, then it’s back to the usual routine. Bitch.” She nodded at him, and she left. Once she was out of sight, she ran to her favorite place to think, and to escape. She watched the cherry blossom petals fall around her slowly. She’d never felt so cold in her life as the torturous heat of the sun beat down on her. She whispered to herself as silent tears streaked down her face.

“Mom... I tried to protect you. I promise... I tried. I should have tried harder. I’m so sorry.” She held herself, just like she had yesterday, except this time she was completely aware of her surroundings. “I’m so sorry...” More tears fell down her face slowly. She had been trying not to cry, but it was so difficult. She thought she sensed another presence, but she couldn’t be sure.

“It’s okay to cry.” She looked up slowly at the voice she had heard. She wasn’t as surprised as she normally would be to see Kakashi-Sensei, dressed in all black this time, kneeling next to her with a hand on her shoulder. She sniffed a little and allowed him to sit next to her. It was strange seeing him dressed in something other than his usual outfit. Just as it was strange to see Naruto in something that wasn’t an obnoxious orange color.

“I just miss her so much already, Kakashi-Sensei! I’ve been through this once already... With my father... Now I have nothing... nobody... left!” She cried into his chest, no longer caring what he thought of her. Not caring right now if he thought she was weak or strong. Right now she really just needed a shoulder to cry on, and to her it seemed like he was willing to be that shoulder for her right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not as long as the first chapter but, whatever I guess. The story is going through a lot of editing and reworking now that I know what happens in canon. Even though this is super AU. Again, comments are wonderful things and I appreciate them greatly! <3 Also, I just created a Tumblr blog for my author name so if you're an anon with a Tumblr and want to keep up just go here: https://velvetrose529.tumblr.com/


	3. Nightmares

The next week Sakura missed training. The team noticed her absence, of course, but they didn’t say or do anything. After all, they all felt truly horrible for her, they all knew how it felt to lose somebody. Well, Naruto didn’t know it like Sasuke or Kakashi, he had just been born when his parents died. But he knew what it felt like to not have his parents. And Sakura had just lost her mother.

They trained in a solemn silence the entire week, wishing there was something they could do for their teammate. Naruto voiced thoughts all week, his desire to go see how she was doing, and on Friday, Kakashi agreed to check on her wellbeing for them. He didn’t think she’d want a crowd. He wasn’t even sure she’d want to see him either, but even he had to admit he was concerned for her. Something had been bothering him about his student for a while now and this could give him some insight.

When he arrived at the house, the last thing he expected to hear was yelling coming from inside, but that’s exactly what he heard. He swore he heard curse words being yelled multiple times. He thought he even heard a male calling someone a bitch. He was hesitant to knock on the door, in fact he was wondering if she’d moved in the past week, but when he did he was almost relieved to see Sakura standing there. While he was relieved to see he had the right house, he id have some serious question about what he’d heard through the door.

“K-K-Kakashi-Sensei? W-W-What are you do-doing here?” Her response wasn’t making him feel any better about what he’d heard. He just couldn’t get his mind around her strange behavior. She had just stuttered, something she really didn’t do all that often, and looked extremely pale. She looked like, well, death. Though he would never say it, at least not out loud. Not so soon after she lost her mother. He tried to think of the right thing to say, and decided on just being blunt about it.

“I came to see how you’re doing.” Bunt in the easy way, rather than blunt in the hard way. He wasn’t about to just blurt out all of his concerns on her front step. She forced a smile at her Sensei, knowing if she showed anything else he’d worry, but she could still hear yelling from her bedroom about finishing up at the door. Her father wanted her back at her room, he was demanding her. Apparently the week-long wait had been tough on him and his disgusting behaviors.

“Well, I’m doing fine. I’ll see you on Monday, Kakashi-Sensei.” She closed the door before he could say anything else to her. She turned towards the stairs, and leaned up against the door, wishing she could have been able to tell him the truth. She wanted some kind of reprieve from this but she knew it wasn’t meant to be. But it was so hard to see him so caring and not say a word. But she knew if she did… Well it was just better for everyone if she kept her mouth shut. She sighed, and started to walk back up the stairs.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

It hadn’t been long since her mother had died, and Sakura’s home life had progressively worsened. She no longer had lunch because she had no time to make it, nor did she have time to eat breakfast. Dinner was also rare because her father did whatever he wanted to her, whenever he wanted, and just forgot to feed her. Many nights he withheld dinner simply because he felt she was ‘too fat’ for him, which meant there were days that she didn’t eat at all.

Sakura had gone to the hokage’s office with her team, they had just finished a D-rank (they got a lot of those lately). Naruto was complaining about the missions they received, he wanted something better. And while she agreed, she couldn’t bring herself to be overly vocal about it. Luckily, it seemed Sasuke was on Naruto’s side today, and helped with the persuasion of receiving a more difficult mission.

Sakura nearly cried tears of joy when she learned that their new mission was an escort mission. C-Ranked because they had a long distance, but that was it, at least that was what they hoped. They were just meant to protect an old man on his way to the land of waves. They were told to pack for a few weeks, and while she was concerned about what that would mean for when she got back, she knew it wouldn’t be an immediate issue.

When she went home to collect her things she stopped in to see her father. She was worried about telling him, she always was, but he was always accepting. Likely because it would cause too much of a scene if he didn’t accept it. Raise too many questions. He would tell her that if she was back even an hour later than midnight of the day she promised to return she would be severely punished. She would nod, and leave with that understanding. So far, she hadn’t had any issues with keeping to that rule, and things went fine.

“I will be back in a few weeks, daddy, I have an escort mission.” He nodded acceptingly, though she didn’t miss the look in his eyes that meant nothing good would be happening when she got back, and she left to meet up with her team. Unfortunately, the lack of food from the past few weeks had weakened her greatly. This time away with food, three meals a day, would do her good. Sadly, it didn’t do anything for her now. She couldn’t even run, and it caused her to be late to meet with her team at the gate.

When she arrived at the main gate to Konoha she wasn’t all that surprised to see her team was waiting for her, along with the old man they were escorting. She apologized quickly, and they headed off on their way, without any complaints from her team on her lateness. The old man had had a few words to say on the subject but Kakashi-Sensei shut him up pretty quickly. probably a good thing because if he didn’t Naruto might have said something. She was surprised and relieved that there had been no other issues. The last thing she wanted was to explain why she was so slow.

It wasn’t long, perhaps a few hours, before she felt her first dizzy spell. She ignored it as best she could, but it was soon followed by a stronger one. This time, she clutched her head as she tried to get herself back to normal. It wasn’t working, though. Kakashi-Sensei could tell something was up with his student, his students still never understood how he figured them out so easily, and turned just as Sakura started to lose her balance, and collapse. Within seconds, he was under her falling body, just before she could hit the ground.

“I think we should break for lunch here.” No one argued with him, though usually Naruto would. They set up a small area for food and Kakashi helped the weakened Sakura to where everyone was eating. He got her some food and water and helped her have some. When she had gotten enough strength to eat on her own, she did, trying to hide how embarrassing it was that kakashi-Sensei had to help her. 

Kakashi looked at his student with worry, he thought she seemed to be eating less but she’d insisted there was nothing wrong. She always insisted that there was nothing wrong. And she usually seemed fine during training, so he didn’t have much to go on in the concern department. But then there was what he'd heard when he’d gone to check up on her. He wasn’t about to really call into question his student’t home life but it was all very worrying.

“What happened?” He wasn’t just asking as a concerned teacher, on a mission he did need to know if something happened. If she’d actually been attacked secretly they needed to know about it, and even Naruto would be able to tell him if he’d felt something hit him before nearly falling over.

“I suppose I just haven’t eaten enough the past few days.” She shrugged. She had gotten increasingly better at pretending like nothing was wrong. There was a small part of her screaming to tell Kakashi-Sensei everything when they were alone (because Naruto and Sasuke had gotten into another one of their fights and left them in the dust), but she squashed those thoughts quickly every time. Everyone seemed to take her explanation easily enough and when they had finished eating, they pressed on.

As they continued to travel, Sakura couldn’t help but notice the puddles on the ground. Something was wrong there, there shouldn’t have been puddles. It hadn’t rained in days, it was dry as all get out right now. Puddles on the ground… She turned to face Kakashi-Sensei, not sure if she should point it out. She wasn’t going to speak up if no one else noticed anything, had been trained not to.

But she wished she had, because only moments later they were attacked. She immediately jumped in front of Tazuna to protect him. She looked next to her and realized Sasuke had done the same. Naruto seemed frozen in place, which wasn’t exactly reassuring to them. It wouldn’t be useful to have him on their team if the moment someone attacked he froze like that.

The battle was kind of a blur. Sakura ended up not having to do much but Sasuke and Kakashi had done a decent amount. They had to get on their way pretty quickly, Naruto ended up getting poisoned and then stabbing himself to get the poison out, but it happened. And after a little persuasion they continued on their way, Sakura didn’t really want to argue that they should be going home so she kept their mouth shut. Really, she was just glad to be out of her house for a while.

They had to set up camp before they could make it to the Land of Waves. It didn’t make sense to gender the tents as there were four males and one female so they ended up splitting it by age. Kakashi shared a tent with Tazuna and the three Genin shared a tent. Normally they would be fine setting up their own, but as the mission had taken a slightly more dangerous turn, Kakashi-Sensei didn’t want any of the kids in their own tent.

Sakura figured it would be fine, but the night certainly didn’t go as she would have expected. It wasn’t uncommon for her to have nightmares at home, but usually she was silent. Would wake up with tears going down her face, but no noise came out. This night was… A little different. Almost as if her subconscious wanted her to get found out.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

_“Sakura, sweetheart, I’m home.” I heard his sickly sweet voice travel up the stairs. I tried to make myself as small as possible, and hide from him. Maybe if he couldn’t see me, nothing would happen to me tonight. Nothing bad, anyways. How wrong I was. “Sakura, if you don’t show yourself, I’ll be forced to use the whip once I do find you. And you know I will.”_

_“I’m here, daddy!” I quickly jumped out from where I was hiding. Not the whip. ANYTHING but the whip! He looked at me like I was some kind of prize, and I swallowed back vomit. He was absolutely disgusting._

_“That’s a good girl, Sakura. Now come here, I have a new outfit for you to wear.” He pulled out a lacy bra with more lace fabric coming from it. The hanging fabric was completely see-through. It was too short to cover anything below my waist. And that was the only piece of clothing I could see. I didn’t even want to think about what he had planned for this outfit._

_“Isn’t there more?” He laughed at me, and shook his head no. I was confused, but didn’t show it. If I showed any confusion, he’d probably just hurt me even more then he already planned. But... Did he really expect me to wear only a top? I mean... Usually I wasn’t wearing much by the time he got to what he wanted to do, but I never started out with so little on before._

_“You don’t need more.” My eyes widened, what was he planning for tonight? For the rest of the nights until he got a new outfit? I was terrified. He took off his pants slowly and came towards me. He started to pull off my clothes, and I felt tears falling down my face. He had never done anything outside of my bedroom before. And I was never this... Exposed._

_“No! No! NO! Mom! MOM HELP ME!! Mom PLEASE!! Make him stop, please make him stop!”_

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“MOM!! Make him stop, PLEASE JUST MAKE HIM STOP!!!” She felt someone shaking her vigorously. She shot up quickly. “MOM!” She was breathing quickly and heavily, still thinking about that horrible nightmare. Sasuke was looking at her with what looked like a genuinely worried expression, something she was sure she’d never seen on the boy, at least… Not for her. And when she looked over, a set of blue eyes was looking at her as well. She’d woken both Naruto and Sasuke.

“Sakura... are you alright? Who’s ‘him’?” She ignored the lack of honorific, something he’d actually begun to use lately, and looked at Sasuke with her best confused face. And though she couldn’t see it, Naruto was giving the dark haired boy an actual confused face. She couldn’t tell him what had happened, he couldn’t know it was real. No one could know! If she breathed a word of it to anyone... Kami she don’t want to know what he would do to her if that happened. To her or the people she told.

“I-I’m fine, Sasuke-Kun. It-It was just a bad dream. You can go back to sleep, I’m fine, really.” He looked at Sakura, trying to figure out what she was hiding, but he just couldn’t. He probably wouldn’t be able to sleep soundly after what he’d heard, and seen, but if she was going to try, so was he. It seemed Naruto was thinking the same thing as Sasuke, and was likely too tired to argue any further to figure out what was going on. There had to be more to the story that she just was’t giving.

Sasuke turned over on his side and tried to go back to sleep, but it was hard to get the image of Sakura’s terrified face out of his mind. He’d never seen such pure terror on anyone’s face before this. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine anything but the look on her face. Slowly, somehow, he managed to go back to sleep.

Naruto was the same way, closing his eyes and only seeing the look of pure terror on Sakura’s face. She hadn’t even looked like that when they’d been attacked earlier in the day. What could have her so afraid that she would look like that?

Sakura pretended to fall asleep, but the moment she knew the boys were asleep, she left the tent. She sat outside, and looked at the stars. She noticed one of them was twinkling, seemingly at her. She hopped to the top of the tree and reached out as if to touch it. She sighed, and dropped her arm. She closed her eyes slowly and tried to imagine her mother’s face.

“I’m sorry mom... So sorry.” She sighed, and hopped down to the ground. She quietly made her way back into the tent and fell asleep. Thankfully, she didn’t have another nightmare. Sasuke and Naruto would have gotten extremely suspicious if she did, and she wasn’t sure that she’d be able to write it off as easily as the last time. And if they got that suspicious they might tell Kakashi-Sensei and he was the one she was most worried about. He was more likely to figure it out, and he was more likely to do something about it.

The next morning, Sakura was getting changed by the river. She had bathed, and was getting dressed, when she heard a noise behind her. She picked up a kunai and aimed it towards the noise, forgetting she was naked, and realized it was just an animal. She sighed and dropped the knife back onto the rock. She finished getting dressed and grabbed her weapons.

“Ow...” She realized one of her kunai had stabbed her hand. She sighed and took care of it quickly. She realized the pain had left quickly, and she was left with another feeling that she couldn’t quite describe. She liked the feeling though, but if her father saw those kinds of injuries he’d throw a fit. The last time she had come home from a mission injured, he’d beaten her for wrecking herself like that. She’d found it somewhat ironic, and somewhat hypocritical, but she didn’t say anything.

She returned just in time as everyone had just started waking up. The guys usually just waited until they reached their destination to bathe, they really didn’t care as much as she did, and that was fine. They could get away wit it. Hell, so could she. She just didn’t want to. She enjoyed getting some time to herself.

She joined her team as they sat around the fire for breakfast. She glanced at Naruto and Sasuke, just hoping they didn’t casually mention her nightmare as they ate. She didn’t want to explain it to Kakashi-Sensei. Even just one nightmare might be enough to tip the scale in a way that could end very badly. She ate quickly, and went to pack up her things from the tent they’d used the night before.

She decided to use this time to try and remember the exact nightmare she had. She was sure it had never actually happened before, at least not that exact scenario, she didn’t even recognize the outfit she’d been given. She sighed, and shook her head at herself. She wasn’t sure what she was going to accomplish by remembering the nightmare. Even if that scenario had happened in real life, what did it matter? It felt real enough last night to nearly give her a panic attack. She heard a noise and looked at the entrance to the tent, not all that surprised to see Sasuke coming in.

“Hey.” She nodded at him, not expecting him to say anything else to her, so she was surprised when he did. “So what was up with last night?” Sakura sighed, annoyed, and sat up, looking at Sasuke. She really didn’t want to talk about last night, especially not with him. He was the only one, besides Kakashi, who would be able to figure out on their own what was happening to her. Naruto wasn’t likely to think too much on the incident, might not even remember it now that he was fully awake. She really didn’t want anyone finding out for fear of her own safety. And possibly theirs too.

“I told you, it was just a nightmare. Everyone has them.” Sasuke didn’t look like he was accepting her answer. Sakura sighed. “What’s the big deal? So I had a nightmare. Geez, just leave me alone!” She got up and stormed out of the tent, not even finishing her packing. Sasuke sighed, he wasn’t sure what to expect, but he supposed he should have seen that one coming. He decided to stay in the tent for now, and leave her be. He had to pack up his stuff anyway, and whatever was bothering her probably wasn’t an immediate threat. And even though he was right, he had no idea how wrong he would have been, had they been in Konoha.

Sakura was hopping from tree to tree, just getting as far away as possible. She knew she should have probably been somewhat touched that he cared enough to ask, but part of her assumed that he just asked because she had interrupted his sleep last night. She sighed, and rested at the top of the tree. She wondered what Sasuke must think of her right now, but knew she didn’t have long to ponder as they would have to leave soon. Perhaps she’d give him just long enough to pack so she could do it in peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter needed some heavy editing. Long story short I initially wrote this as being a mission after Tazuna. Now it is the Tazuna escort mission. As you could tell.


	4. Hospital

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gets decently violent. Now I know I put just about every trigger warning available, but I just wanted you to know.

Sakura was rushing home as fast as she could. The mission was supposed to be long, she knew that, but she had no way of predicting all the enemies they ended up facing. She'd given her father a decent amount of time but she knew she’d gone over. They’d been gone a month. She hadn’t said a month. She knew she was going to be in so much trouble with her father. When she got into the house her father was glaring at her. She tried to hold her ground under the glare, but he terrified her.

“Where. The. Hell. Have. You. Been?” She was speechless, she had no idea what to say to him. She felt like her entire body was frozen, she was petrified. She opened her mouth to say something, but she shut it again immediately. She didn’t want to say the wrong thing and get in trouble. Well... More trouble anyway. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like she’d be able to do much of anything right tonight. “You will answer me when I ask you a question!” She felt a hard slap across her face. Her hand went to her cheek but it was forcefully pulled away quickly.

“I... I’m sorry. The mission… It was harder than we expected-” Before she could finish her sentence she was shoved. Hard. She felt her head hit the wall and she saw stars as she fell to the floor. She just sat there for a moment, dazed and disoriented. All she could do was worry about what would happen next. This wasn’t usual behavior from him, and at this moment, she was officially terrified of him. More than she had ever been before, and that was saying something. He picked her up, roughly, by the throat and pushed her up against the wall. She gasped for air and he just gripped her neck tighter. She grabbed at his hands trying to pull off his hand but he just squeezed tighter in response.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about why you were late. You said you were going to be back a week ago!” She thought she could smell alcohol on his breath as he talked, but she couldn’t be sure. She trembled under his grip, and her vision started to blacken from the corners of her eyes. She tried to gasp out a word but it was just too difficult. He gripped even tighter for a moment and she was sure she was done for. Just then, he dropped her to the ground. “I’m not finished with you yet. Upstairs. Now.” He sounded angry but he wasn’t yelling anymore. Sakura knew this wouldn’t end well for her.

She ran up the stairs and changed quickly. Her father was behind her, extremely pissed off. She watched him close in on her, tie her arms and legs to the bed, and gag her with a piece of his sweaty clothing. She could practically taste it. He started to undress himself, and this time he undressed her as well. Sakura had never been completely naked in front of him before tonight, and she never wanted to be. She closed her eyes and waited for it all to end…

She felt another hard slap on her face. Her eyes shot open in shock and pain, and she was staring at her father’s face. He yelled something at her but she couldn’t quite understand what he was saying. She felt like she was floating, like she was there but she wasn’t. Her brain was somewhere completely different than her body. Her eyes started to close again and she felt another hard smack on her face and it brought her back to reality.

“I said keep your eyes open, bitch! If I see your eyes close again you’ll regret it!” She nodded quickly, terrified of what was about to happen. He did what he usually did to her, but it felt like it was going on forever. He was much more rough than usual, and it hurt a lot more. She had no idea when it ended, but when it did, she couldn’t even move. She was in so much pain. He untied her, and left her alone in the room and she slowly curled up in a ball. No matter how much pain she was in, she needed to be in any position other than the one she was just in.

She heard footsteps coming back toward her room sometime later. It felt like hours but it was most likely only about one, though she couldn’t be sure when exactly. Her father was holding a sake bottle, and coming right for her. She wanted to cry out, run, anything but deal with this. She’d never actually seen him drink before, and she realized he never had before hurting her. He was always sober, which made what happened all the times before tonight that much worse. Her thoughts went straight to the worst case scenario.

She was about to die.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

She woke up in a white room, and squinted against the brightness. She couldn’t really remember the events of the night before, and she was almost positive she wouldn’t want to. However, she also knew she probably needed to. Just then, she heard a soft, soothing voice talking to her.

“Good morning, Sakura.” She shot up quickly, thinking it was her mom that was talking to her. Suddenly, she felt dizzy and lightheaded and fell back down onto the bed. Her head ached and throbbed, and she felt a comforting hand on her arm. “Sakura, do you know what happened to you?” Sakura shook her head at the nurse, whom she now knew was not her mother, though she regretted the decision as the throbbing intensified.

“What’s happening? Why am I here? And why don’t I remember anything from last night?” Her throat hurt when she talked, as if it was constricted somehow. And her voice sounded like she’d spent her entire life smoking. The nurse didn’t seem concerned, at least not at her current throat predicament. But Sakura could sense some concern there for something else. For what, though, she couldn’t really be sure.

“You have a mild concussion, memory loss is completely normal. But it’s not severe in your case. And it will hurt to talk and breathe for a few days, the person who hurt you was extremely strong. It could even be a week before your throat is back to normal.” Sakura nodded a little. But she was curious about the ‘person who hurt you’ line. She wanted to say she knew what the nurse was talking about but she really had no idea. Right now she was only assuming that she’d been injured on a mission. Her brain didn’t go to the other place because she was positive she’d never end up in the hospital because of _him_.

He’d never risk that.

“Will you tell me what happened?” The nurse seemed hesitant to tell her what happened, and she wondered why. She was still convinced it had to be a mission injury and that wasn’t so terrible of a thing to say. But after a couple of minutes she finally started talking.

“Well I don’t know the full story, of course, but I might be able jog your memory. Only if you want me to. The exams we performed showed a lot of... abuse. You may not want to remember. At least not right away.” Sakura shook her head at the nurse. She needed to know what happened to her.

“I want to remember. I don’t care if what happened to me was really bad, I want to know.” She paused a moment. “No, I don’t want to know, I _need_ to know what happened to me. I can’t get through this not knowing.” The nurse nodded at her slightly, in understanding.

“From what I understand, you were beaten, choked, and...” She paused there, clearly having difficulty saying the next word. “Raped by the man who was with you. He ran away, but there are ANBU searching for him. They won’t rest until he is found or proven to be dead.” Sakura nodded at the nurse... suddenly her brain was in agony. She grimaced as memories of the other night flooded back to her. The Sakura from about five minutes ago was shocked, but there was no denying the evidence or the memories.

“I... I remember. I got home and he was waiting for me. He hit me, and shoved me to the ground. He choked me... then told me to go to my room so he could...” Even after hearing the nurse say it... she couldn’t. It was too painful. “I thought he was finished... but he got drunk... More drunk then he was before... He attacked me with a sake bottle.” That’s when she looked down and realized her hands were thickly bandaged. She couldn’t even make out her individual fingers.

“There was a lot of ceramic in the palms and fingers of your hands. It seems like you were trying to defend yourself. It wedged itself into your bones and managed to hit some vital areas but you’ll be fine. You’ll have regained full use of your hands in about a month or so.” Sakura’s eyes widened at the idea of waiting that long to use her hands again. How was she supposed to eat? “May I ask you a couple of questions?” Sakura nodded at the nurse.

“You can ask me anything, it doesn’t mean I’ll have an answer for you.” It was true, but she knew she probably would. She doubted the nurse would ask her anything she wouldn’t have an answer for.

“Did he ever use a... whip? On you, I mean.” Sakura waited a moment before nodding sadly. “How long has he been abusing you?” Sakura scrunched up her face, trying to remember. Her head was obviously damaged during the struggle, her memories were a little foggy. Nowhere near amnesia levels, but she imagined it was probably an effect of her concussion.

“Two years? I think?” The nurse looked shocked and horrified at that. Two years of that torture? Why had she not been in here sooner? How had she not been in here sooner? She mentally reminded herself to thank the boy that brought her in. This poor girl had been through an ordeal, and judging by her wounds, she would have died had he not intervened.

For the next couple of days Sakura recuperated with only her team visiting her. Although, she only saw Kakashi-Sensei and Naruto so far. She’d asked that no one else find out the truth just yet, which meant visitors would be scarce, but one day while Kakashi and Naruto were visiting her, she asked some questions that had been on her mind since she had first woken up.

“Naruto? Kakashi-Sensei?” She barely spoke above a whisper, she was sure her throat wasn’t healing as quickly because she kept talking. Whether it was with the nurses or her visitors, she didn’t really shut up. She wasn’t sure what exactly she spoke about, but she just seemed to keep talking. Kakashi and Naruto looked at her with curious expressions. She waited for them to say something, it would give her more time to figure out what she wanted to say. Or at least, how she was going to say what she wanted to say.

“Yes, Sakura?” She tried to think of which question to ask first. She’d been wondering who had brought her to the hospital, but she also wanted to know when she’d be released and who she’d be released to, considering she didn’t want to go home alone, or with just anybody. She also missed her friends and was hoping Kakashi-Sensei could tell the other girls. She decided to save the telling people for last, and asked the questions that had been bothering her first.

“Who brought me here? Was it you, Kakashi-Sensei?” Kakashi shook his head at Sakura. She thought she saw guilt and sadness on his face, but decided not to think about it for the time being. Besides, she could be wrong anyway. The damned mask kept her from knowing for sure, but she was almost certain his face never looked quite like that. Even though it was covered. She raised her eyebrow, Kakashi made the most sense. It wasn’t Naruto was it? She turned to look at Naruto, but he shook his head too. That left only one person, that she could think of anyway, but there was no way he would have... “Then who...” Kakashi-Sensei looked like he was about to speak but he was interrupted by a third person.

“It was me.” She turned to look at Sasuke standing in the doorway. He looked as though he had been in a pretty decent fight, but was healing from it. He was bruised and bandaged. Her eyes widened, and before he could continue speaking, she said something.

“What happened to you?”

“I had a hunch something was going on, after the nightmare incident, so I investigated. Let’s just say... There are some things that can’t be unseen.” So he had been looking through her window? The two of them both visibly shuddered at the memory. Because Sasuke was explaining, she was focusing on him, and missed Naruto’s look of guilt at not coming to the same worried conclusion that Sasuke had. “I know what you’re thinking, I only looked because I heard things that I didn’t think I should have been hearing coming from your room. I went to go for help but I got worried about you before I could get someone. I went back, but I didn’t really want to go in. I didn’t want you to think I was creeping.”

Sakura seemed a little shocked by the things Sasuke was saying. It wasn’t often that he sounded so concerned. He’d actually put some decent thought into this, and wanted to respect her, and her privacy, as best he could. She wasn’t sure she would have thought about the things he worried about, but she couldn’t help but admire that he did. That he thought she would be bothered by him just coming in.

“Finally I decided to just help when he came back to you, so I intervened when he attacked you with the sake bottle.” Well at least he wasn’t some sort of creeper, but she supposed she should have known that. She kind of already did know that. Sasuke wasn’t really the type. Besides, she could barely remember anything from that night anyway.

“Thank you... Sasuke-Kun.” He just sort of turned his head away for a moment before turning back to face her. He didn’t want it to seem like he’d suddenly gone soft, but he couldn’t help but feel bad for his teammate. He and Naruto obviously weren’t the only ones who had it rough.

“Hn.”

“Can I ask though... Did you... have to choose... between me and him? I know you wouldn’t have let him get away so easily.” She hoped it wasn’t some kind of blow to his pride that her father had gotten away. He was quite a fan of taking care of the enemy first, but if he’d had to make the choice…

“Yeah. You were bleeding really badly I knew if I took the time I would have needed to take care of him you would probably die. That would have been counterproductive.” In his head though, he was actually worried about her safety. He actually really cared about his teammates, even Naruto, though he’d never admit it out loud. “So I knocked him out just long enough to get you out of there. I guess when he realized that the Hokage would figure out what happened soon enough, he fled. That’s what I heard anyway. When I went back, he was gone, so it seemed like the most logical scenario.”

There was a bit of an awkward silence after Sasuke had finished talking. Sakura was imagining Sasuke returning, if he’d looked anything like what he did now… He’d been more concerned about taking care of him than getting his own wounds looked at. He’d clearly been seen by someone at the hospital considering his bandages. The group looked at each other for a minute, not sure what to say following Sasuke’s speech.. Kakashi cut through the silence, however, by changing the subject.

“So, I hear you’ll be released two weeks from today. Doesn’t it get lonely here with just us visiting you?” She nodded at Kakashi-Sensei. She missed her girlfriends, even Ino. That kind of shocked her a little. Either way, though, she wanted to see them. She wanted to see her friends. And they were going to find out eventually anyway, and she’d rather they hear it from her.

“I was actually going to ask you... Could you tell the girls I’m here? Tenten, Ino, Hinata... I’d like to see them.” Kakashi-Sensei nodded. He didn’t even question how the girl knew Tenten considering she was a year behind her. He was going to question anything that came out of his student’s mouth right now. She really hadn’t asked for much, so he felt like he should at least do this for her. Though she could have asked for the sun and he would probably have found a way to give it to her. He felt horrible for not noticing her predicament before it was almost too late, and would do just about anything for his student right now. He had never seen something like this before.

“I can go pass on the message to them now, I’ll leave you with the boys.” He looked at Naruto and Sasuke with a commanding look. “Try not to kill each other, okay? She’s bedridden, and I don’t feel like hearing that she had to risk her health for you two. Got it?” They nodded at Kakashi-Sensei. Neither of them had any intention of causing trouble for their injured teammate. After finding out what she’d been through… They weren’t sure they ever wanted to cause her pain again. She’d certainly had enough to last at least a dozen lifetimes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I just started both work and school this week it's starting to get a little busier for me. This might be the story that gets the most updates because so much of it has already been written. Even heavy editing is easier than writing a new chapter from scratch. So if you follow any of those stories don't be surprised if their updates get a little farther apart. It's not that I don't want to update them, I love them dearly, but my time travel one requires me to watch through ALL of the Pain attack for the next few chapters at least and then requires even more watching after that. Want to know what I'm changing and all that. One Day at a Time might see more chapters in the near future than the time travel one because of that. Anyway, sorry for ranting about things not related to this story I just wanted you guys to know!


	5. Kakashi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, once again, just bear with me on her knowing Tenten. Personal preference, just pretend they met in the village or something. They're friends. Because I want to include her. Because the poor thing doesn't get enough screen time in the show.

Kakashi Hatake used to think that nothing could get to him.

The copycat ninja thought he’d seen it all. From seeing his father’s dead body as a result of a ritualistic suicide to literally killing one of his best friends. Time and circumstance aged a young boy quickly, much more quickly than it should. So when he’d been saddled with the emotional baggage group of the rookies of the year, and had ended up passing them, he was certain there was nothing there he couldn’t handle.

And that included the nine tails jinchuriki.

But the moment a young, pink haired, genin appeared to be afraid to go _home_ , he had a feeling his life was going to get much more complicated. Especially when he knew for a fact that said home had two parents waiting for her there. Something her teammates just didn’t have.

He had wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt that day. That perhaps she didn’t want to be home alone injured, assuming both of her parents worked. Perhaps she was afraid of falling behind in training if she went home. He didn’t want to turn a potentially normal fear into something it wasn’t. The girl was still young, could be blowing things out of proportion the slightest bit. Not to mention she would, reasonably, have a different definition of fear than he would considering their different life experiences. But did decide he would keep a closer eye on his student from there on out.

And the following week, it had started with a movement. One so small it was almost imperceptible, but it was there. She likely didn’t even know he’d seen it, but the moment Naruto had exploded at him and suggested he was playing favorites with his team, she’d gone tense. Almost… afraid. And really she had no reason to be frightened of the blonde, the kid was a lovable fool most of the time. A knucklehead as well, but Kakashi would he hard pressed to call him terrifying, especially if you didn’t know what was behind the seal. Hell, the boy had trouble terrifying most enemy nin who didn’t know who he was.

And when he realized she hadn’t been following his request for her to use crutches so her ankle would heal properly, he knew something was going on. Something had to be going on. But still he tried. Tried to convince himself that everything was alright, that he was being irrational. And that continued through their last mission. Even though the girl had almost passed out on him simply by walking. He’d noticed the unhealthy weight loss, the paler skin and dark circles. The fatigue that was borderline dangerous, but he didn’t know what to do. He just kept telling himself that everything was alright because he didn’t know what else to do. His only job with her was to be her teacher, he didn’t _need_ to be her parent like he had to do with Naruto and Sasuke.

And everything he saw could be easily, reasonably, explained away if you looked at it long enough. If you read into it enough. Girls that age had body issues, something Kakashi was only vaguely aware of. And she’d just lost her mother as well. Considering all the factors, she could have gone one of two ways and she went the way of the decrease in her body weight. Though it did still weird him out that he was explaining that kind of thing to himself in his head about his twelve year old student.

But looking back, as one does, always makes it seem like everything was so much more obvious than it seemed at the time. And while, in most cases, it really wouldn’t have been as obvious and could have been easily missed without some serious outside help… This time it really was that obvious. Rather than it being something he missed, it was something he’d pretended didn’t exist. Something he’d considered if only for a second but then pushed aside.

Everything was there, all the signs, and he’d ignored every one of them. Ignored them all because he’d convinced himself it wasn’t supposed to be his problem. That he needed to let her parenting happen at home. Not realizing that that was where all of her problems lied. Not realizing he was actually closer to a father figure than the man who waited for her at home every night.

That thought still made him shudder.

So at her request to pass on a message to her friends, he jumped at the chance. In his head, he needed to redeem himself. He was a failure of a teacher, a failure of a protector. The man had done his student no good, and he needed to make up for that in any way he could. If that meant wandering the village like a messenger than so be it.

Kakashi figured that by this point, at this time of day, he should hit the training grounds in search of her friends. He was sure all of the teams would be training, so he went there. As he assumed, he saw Kurenai’s team training in their usual spot. He went over and smiled at them all from behind his mask for a moment. They were sparring, and he decided to wait for them to finish before speaking to them all. Not that that would stop Kurenai from speaking to him, and honestly he needed to talk to another adult. And while Gai was always a good friend, and would likely hear the whole story later, he felt like he needed to get this off of his chest now. And really this was a lesson that needed to be ingrained into every Sensei’s head.

“Kakashi, what brings you here?” Kurenai was smiling at him, but his face looked grim again, even behind the mask you could tell he wasn’t smiling anymore. Her face fell as well, and she walked closer to him, and whispered her questions so they wouldn’t be overheard. “What happened? Is something wrong? Don’t tell me someone...” Kakashi shook his head at Kurenai. He knew what she was thinking, it was logical in their line of work, but it wasn’t as bad as she was thinking. Although… Thinking about it now, it could actually be considered worse than what she was thinking.

“I need to speak with Hinata, but I’m sure I can say it in front of the team.” He mostly didn’t want to make it as bug of a fuss as it was. If he just said she was in the hospital in front of the team they would assume a regular, work related, injury. If he did it in secret they would know that something was up. Kurenai nodded and clapped her hands. The sparring ceased and everyone looked at their Sensei. However, when Kakashi spoke, they all turned to him, albeit looking more than a little surprised. Even though the message was for Hinata he really didn’t feel like stirring up trouble by making it a secret.

“Hinata... A few days ago Sakura was admitted to the hospital, she asked me to inform you because she won’t be discharged for two more weeks.” Hinata had gasped, her hand covering her mouth. Two weeks was a long time for a shinobi to be in the hospital, and she couldn’t help but wonder what had happened. Whatever had happened to her had to be serious, and she had just gotten back from a mission outside of the village. Her quiet voice broke the silence after a minute.

“B-b-but she’s alright... Ka-Kakashi-Sensei?” He nodded at the girl, positive he shouldn’t say why she was in the hospital. At least not to the whole team. Hinata looked at Kurenai, who dismissed the team to allow Hinata to visit Sakura. She was obviously concerned because of the way Kakashi was behaving. She shouldn’t have needed to dismiss the whole team but she wanted a minute to speak with Kakashi alone. It wasn’t normal for a teacher to inform the students friends these kinds of things. They had to return in one hour to continue their training.

“I need to find Gai’s team and Asuma’s team. I know Ino and Sakura have been friends for a while, though I don’t know how she knows Tenten… Anyway, she wanted me to inform them as well.” Kurenai pointed in the direction of where the two teams were training. Then she asked a question that she hoped Kakashi-would answer.

“But… Before you leave… What happened to Sakura? You wouldn’t look that grim if it was just a mission injury.” Kakashi knew he could trust her, if nothing else because he needed someone to talk to about this that wasn’t a preteen. Not to mention he had a feeling the other two team leaders might ask the same question. He was iffy about Gai, he would likely ask later on and Kakashi was likely to tell him anyway so he might just wait it out, but Asuma would almost definitely ask now if given the opportunity. So he might as well get used to saying it. Although, it would always be difficult.

“She was being abused at home. I’m sure Hinata and the others will hear about it at the hospital but... If you had seen the report...” He shook his head. This wasn’t the first time he’d looked this grim about it. He felt horrible, and guilty. He was her teacher, her guardian whenever they were on a mission. He should have seen this. He should have noticed that something was wrong, but he didn’t. At least… didn’t notice enough to consider a problem he needed to address. From what the hospital told him, and what was written in the hospitals report, and from what Sasuke had told him... It was a lot to take in. A lot to handle. “It was horrible... And I didn’t even notice. At least… Not like I should have. I saw the signs, acknowledged them, but didn’t act on them in time.”

“Hey. Don’t beat yourself up over this, I’m sure Sakura doesn’t blame you for what happened.” Kakashi didn’t doubt that fact, but it wasn’t about blame. It was a matter of him being there for his students when they needed help. Even when they weren’t on missions, he wanted to protect them. He treated them like they were his own children. Hell, he felt like they WERE his own children, and he felt like he betrayed her. All because the girl actually had parents when she became his student. It was killing him inside.

“You don’t understand... It’s been going on for at least two years. So for the entire time that I’ve been her teacher... and one of her comrades suspected enough to take action before I did. And she was abused in every way possible.” He hung his head in sadness and guilt, shocked that he was actually fighting back tears. He usually didn’t show emotion like this. It was not like him to cry, not anymore at least. This was different, though. This... This was just too personal to ignore.

“Not...” Kurenai wasn’t quite sure she wanted to hear the answer to her implied question, but she had asked anyway. She would get an answer. Kakashi nodded sadly at her, having no questions about what she meant by what she said, and she suddenly felt like she was going to be sick. She kept herself composed, however.

“Yes. I mean every possible way. Emotional, physical...” He couldn’t bring himself to say the word. Kurenai didn’t expect him to say it either, just the nod was fine. She could hardly believe it. This was not a usual occurrence in Konoha. Missions was one thing, kunoichi especially could be given a mission that would entail that at an older age, but only with consent. And even then there was a lot of training involved in taking on that kind of mission, a lot of preparation. But… To deal with that in her own home? From someone she was supposed to trust? It was horrible just to think about it. And it wasn’t something anyone was prepared for. There was no scheduled counseling before and after, no mandatory time off that came with returning from something like that. Sure, they would likely be instating some similar rules for her, but this wasn’t as much of a bounce back as a mission would be.

“I’m sorry, but it’ll be alright, Kakashi. Just remember to learn from this. That way you can recognize the symptoms in someone else. It’s not often we deal with child abuse here in Konoha, so it’s alright. Just go, Gai and Asuma’s teams aren’t too far from here, and you said you were telling her friends, right?” Kakashi nodded at Kurenai and left for Gai’s training ground. He wasn’t sure he could emotionally handle that conversation again but he knew he might have to in order to complete this request.

Neji was training with his Byakugan when he saw something behind him. Someone was heading towards their training area. From the distance the person was at, he couldn’t tell who it was, even with his Byakugan. He had to be cautious. He quickly stopped his training and spoke to his team.

“Someone is coming towards us.” As the person got closer he realized it was Kakashi-Sensei, and was about to tell them but Gai-Sensei interrupted him.

“Who, Neji?” Just then, before Neji could even respond to his teacher, Kakashi came into view. Gai seemed somewhat thrilled at this and faced his rival. He had a large smile on his face, and his hands on his waist. He was obviously prepared to take part in another one of his ridiculous matches against Kakashi. However, Kakashi didn’t seem so enthused about that idea.

“Well, well, well, Kakashi. What brings you here? Care for another one of our matches?” Kakashi shook his head, even Gai noticed his grim face. The team of Genin came closer to the, now two, sad looking Jonin. “Did something happen?”

“Not today, Gai. Something did happen, I need to speak with Tenten, on Sakura’s behalf.” Tenten heard this and rushed forward, already fearing the worst, because of the way the two Jonin’s looked at the moment. It wasn’t a common sight, seeing such sad faces on their teachers. Even when there was something going on, as Shinobi, they had a tendency to hide their emotions in public. Something neither teacher was even attempting at the moment.

“What’s happened to her? She’s not dead, is she?” Her face was filled with concern for her friend. Kakashi shook his head at Tenten and her face relaxed. “Then why are you here? What’s happened to her?” Kakashi looked down, this particular meeting might be an issue. Tenten was driven, that much he could tell even just from this one encounter. If she wanted to know what happened before she got there she’d do anything and everything to get it out of him. He just hoped Lee wouldn’t say anything.

“She’s fine, or she will be. She was admitted to the hospital a few days ago-” He was about to continue but he was interrupted. Not all that surprising, but it was slightly annoying. The longer this took the more he had to dwell on it, and he was trying really hard not to do that right now. It was simply too painful.

“A few days ago? And I’m just hearing about this now?!” The girl looked angry and upset that she had not been informed sooner than this.

“It’s a delicate situation-” He already regretted phrasing it that way. He could have just said that Sakura waited to tell anyone. Should have just told them that. Now the whole team was going to at least be curious. He knew he fucked up, but he couldn’t very well take it back now. So he was stuck.

“What do you mean, delicate? What happened to her? Tell me!” Kakashi sighed. She wasn’t making this easy for him.

“Tenten, I’ll let Sakura tell you. Like I said, it’s a delicate situation, I’m not the person to tell you. I still have to talk to Ino, but Sakura would really like to see you.” Tenten nodded and looked at Gai-Sensei pleadingly.

“Alright, Tenten, you can go see Sakura.” Kakashi wasn’t even surprised. Gai was… a little crazy when it came to training. But he had a huge heart, that was something that was in no way debatable. And between Kakashi’s look and Tenten’s… He just wasn’t going to say no. “Neji, Lee, continue training. I want you both to spar as if your lives depended on it!” Neji looked slightly annoyed but Lee punched the air with his fist and got into a fighting stance. Kakashi left to find Asuma’s team just as the spar between the two Genin began.

He found Asuma’s team eating lunch in a clearing. He supposed this made it slightly easier. He wouldn’t have to talk to Asuma since he could just ask to borrow Ino. He wouldn’t even really be disturbing their training. He walked up to them, hands in his pockets, and looked at Asuma. He sort of passed on a look of ‘we’re going to be talking later’ as he approached.

“What do you need, Kakashi?” Kakashi had done his best to hide the sadness and continued guilt he was feeling about the situation, even with his unspoken message to his fellow jonin sensei. He wanted to avoid confrontation as best he could. He didn’t do as good of a job as he would have liked, however.

“Mind if I borrow Ino for a little while?” Asuma nodded, noticing the look on Kakashi’s face. He made a mental note to ask later when Kakashi and him talked, and dismissed Ino with Kakashi. The two of them left the training grounds and walked towards the hospital in complete silence.


	6. New Beginning

The three girls found themselves at the hospital at roughly the same time. When they got there it wasn’t long before they were pointed in the direction of Sakura’s room. When they arrived they certainly weren’t expecting Sasuke and Naruto to be there. And the fact that they were acting civil was even weirder.

“What are you two doing here?”

“Keeping an eye on our teammate,” Sasuke responded simply. Tenten scanned the group, noticing that while Sakura was clearly badly injured Sasuke looked a little worse for the wear himself. In a way that she couldn’t quite place, but almost made her uncomfortable. She was missing something, a big something.

“If you two want to leave, it’s fine,” Sakura’s voice broke the silence. Sasuke and Naruto turned to look at her before turning back. Yeah, they trusted her friends to be with her alone, but neither one of them were huge fans of leaving her alone at all. They found themselves feeling somewhat protective of their teammate after learning what they had about what she’d been through.

“Alright.” Sasuke nodded, and left the room, hands in his pockets. Naruto took a few moments, but he left too. They’d been there a while, visiting on and off. They could use a break from the constant reminder of their failure. Their failure to notice what was happening in their female teammate’s life.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

When the girls heard the truth, none of them quite knew what to say. They’d never had to deal with something like this before, they were left somewhat speechless. Tenten’s hands were balled into fists, Ino was just sort of glaring at the wall, and Hinata had no outward anger but was already plotting the different things she could do to Sakura’s ‘father’ with the gentle fist technique.

“I just can’t believe none of us figured it out…” Ino spoke. The rest of the room turned to her, confused for a moment until the words finally registered. “We should have known… We should have seen the difference… I’ve known you for years, Hinata and I were in the same class as you for ages we should have seen it… Stopped it…”

“I hid it.”

“We still should have-”

“It’s too late for should haves and guilt, Ino.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

It had been three weeks since Sakura had been released from the hospital into the care of one of her friends. Five weeks since she’d been admitted in the first place. Kakashi had decided he didn’t want Sakura alone until her father was caught, and Sakura didn’t really want to be alone either. She was now living with Tenten, whose parents travelled a lot so they weren’t home very often. Perfect for avoiding too many conversations with parents about her situation. Tenten was her only option in that department, since she was in no way going to be living with Naruto or Sasuke.

This morning, Tenten had training with Gai-Sensei and her team, but Sakura had the next few days off because her team was on a mission. Some sort of escort thing that was just some guy being paranoid and wasn’t likely to having any missing nin out to get him. Normally she sat and watched their training, occasionally doing minimal things like practicing chakra control. Mainly things that were not taxing on her, and did not involve her hands too much as they were still recovering. Because she was still recovering in general and was not allowed on any missions yet, she was going with Tenten to her training. When they arrived at the training ground, they were the last two to show up.

“I see you brought your friend, Tenten. Will Sakura be joining us?” Tenten nodded at Gai-Sensei. She had hoped it wouldn’t be an issue, she didn’t want to have to argue for Sakura’s sake. She couldn’t leave Sakura home alone though, she wasn’t allowed, and she wouldn’t let her even if she wanted to. She was just as terrified of Sakura’s father as everyone else was, at least when it came to Sakura. She’d gotten the whole story at the hospital, and she was certain if he came anywhere near her he’d be on the receiving end of her most cruel of weapons. She just wanted to protect her friend.

“I hope you don’t mind...She’s staying with me and she can’t go on missions with her team quite yet. And they went on one today, but they’ll be back in a few days.” She hoped that would suffice for Lee and Gai-Sensei. They were the only ones that would make any kind of objections, though Lee might like it. Lee still had a huge crush on Sakura. She knew Neji wouldn’t really care either way as long as he could train uninterrupted.

“And you couldn’t leave her at home?” Tenten was shocked that Neji had been the one to ask. Sakura noticed Neji’s voice showed that he seemed uncaring. Like it didn’t matter one way or the other if she was here or not. He mainly sounded curious about Sakura’s current predicament, but she didn’t really want to talk about it. Sakura then couldn’t help but wonder why Neji had even asked if it looked, and sounded, like he didn’t even really care. He wasn’t usually the curious type.

“I’m not allowed to be home alone.” Neji looked like he was about to ask why not so Tenten immediately changed to subject to protect Sakura’s secret for as long as possible. She knew Sakura didn’t want a lot of people knowing. Whether she was embarrassed or just didn’t like to talk about it, Tenten didn’t know. All she knew was that Sakura wanted it to remain a secret, and she was going to help her do that.

“Maybe we should just start. Sakura are you going to train today, or do you want to watch?” Sakura shrugged. Her hands had healed, for the most part, but she wasn’t supposed to push it too much. Light training only to slowly get her hands back to their usual strength. If she pushed them too much she could cause more damage, and she didn’t want that. She didn’t want to go back to needing help eating, it made her feel more useless than usual. She especially hated being fed. It was degrading after about the first week or so.

“I can’t really push it right now and from what I understand you guys really get into your training. Maybe I should just watch today...” Tenten nodded at Sakura, who waited by the tree for the training session to finish. Tenten and Neji were sparring, and Lee and Gai were really going at it with push-ups and other overly-intense physical activities. Sakura was surprised that they didn’t pass out from exhaustion.

The next couple of days was the same routine. Occasionally doing minor training with Neji and Tenten when the two weren’t sparring. On the last day of training, however, she heard something from the trees. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the entire team heard an angry voice break through the sounds of sparring and other training activities. Everyone stopped what they were doing, and Neji used his Byakugan and noticed someone was coming towards them. He informed the team and they got in a waiting stance, prepared to fight if they needed to.

“You little BITCH! What the fuck did I tell you about telling other people what we were doing!?” Sakura ran towards Tenten faster then anyone thought possible for the girl, and grabbed her arm. She looked absolutely terrified, Tenten had never seen such a horrified face on her friend before. She was a ninja, just like Tenten, and not too much truly scared them. Sakura whispered in Tenten’s ear.

“That’s him. I recognize his voice.” Tenten understood what she meant, and immediately ran in front of Sakura and pulled out one of her scrolls. She summoned a weapon from it, and aimed the large explosive weapon in his direction. They heard it explode, but through the smoke they saw him come walking through. He shoved Tenten out of the way and grabbed Sakura by the collar of her shirt.

“I told you not to tell anyone about our little secret, and what do you do? You blab to everyone in the village!?” He threw her at the nearest tree. She hit it and was knocked out instantly. Neji, Lee, and Gai-Sensei all looked confused and angry. No one attacked one of their friends, or comrades, and got away with it. He was treating her like he knew her, and she seemed powerless against him.

“So that’s what you called it? Your ‘little secret’?! You nearly KILLED her you FUCKING. RAT. BASTARD!” She ran right at him and tried to cut his throat with a kunai but he shoved her away. However, it didn’t even faze Tenten, as she took out another scroll and tried to hit him with the weapon she summoned with it, but he dodged it quickly, and easily.

Lee, Neji, and Gai-Sensei got over the initial shock of this guy showing up and having no idea what was going on, and started to help. Neji reactivated his Byakugan and approached him quickly. He saw that he was definitely a ninja by the way he moved, and by his chakra, but he wasn’t performing any jutsu. Because of this, they were able to take him down easily.

“I’ll get ANBU, Lee keep him from moving, Neji check on Sakura!” Tenten ran off to find an ANBU member to take care of him. Lee and Gai-Sensei kept watch on the man they had captured. Neji went over to Sakura and checked her vitals. She seemed alright for the most part, but why had the man aimed to attack Sakura? What was their connection?

He picked up the unconscious girl and brought her to a place where she could lie down comfortably. He treated the few open wounds she had received and waited for Tenten to return. He also couldn’t help but wonder, why did she need ANBU? Unless he was wanted or something along those lines.

“He’s over here, he attacked her!” He saw Tenten and a couple of ANBU Black Ops arrive. They took hold of the man they had just fought and took him away. A couple of the Black Ops members stayed behind to confirm a couple of things with Tenten. Before they left they turned to Neji.

“Does she need to go to the hospital?” Neji looked down at Sakura who, besides being knocked out and having a few cuts and bruises, looked relatively alright. He figured she wouldn’t want to be back in the hospital so soon. He shook his head at the Black Ops men and they left. Neji picked up Sakura, placed her on his back to carry her, and turned to Tenten.

“I’ll bring her back to your place with you.” Tenten agreed and they left to go back to Tenten’s apartment. When they were inside she showed him to Sakura’s room. After they got her in bed they sat on the couch. After about ten minutes of somewhat awkward silence, Neji spoke. “How have I never been here before?”

“I don’t invite people over usually. Sorry about earlier by the way... It’s just... Damnit he pisses me off. Anyone who could do what he did to Sakura-” Her hands were clenched into tight fists. Her fingernails were digging into her skin, causing her to bleed. Neji put one of his hands on hers and cut her off.

“What did he do to Sakura?” Tenten had tears in her eyes as she was reminded of the image of Sakura on that hospital bed. Because of him! Sakura had told her, Ino, and Hinata everything that he had done. They had asked for details, and only kind of regretted the decision. Neji looked at his friend worriedly. She was literally shaking with rage. “Tenten...”

“He’s the one who put Sakura in the hospital five weeks ago. That’s why I’m glad the ANBU Black Ops finally took him away. He abused her... In every possible way. That’s what I was told.” Neji found it kind of hard to believe that it was actually every possible way. He didn’t want to assume the worst.

“So that includes...” Tenten nodded at Neji, and was about to say something, but another voice cut in before she could respond.

“Yes. He raped me. Every night for two years, except when I was on missions. It got worse after he killed my mother. There’s something I didn’t tell anyone.” Tenten offered Sakura a seat so she wouldn’t have to stand and talk. She took it. “But you both have to swear that this information doesn’t leave this room. Understood?” They both nodded. “I did it to protect my mother from him. It didn’t help though. He still killed her... Even though we had a deal. He made it look like an accident. But when I told him the deal was broken and he couldn’t hurt me anymore, he threatened me. It had gone on for too long, and I was stuck with him then. There was nothing I could do. I was afraid if I told anyone, he’d kill me. Or them.”

Neji was surprised that Sakura hadn’t started to cry, he’d think anyone in her situation would. He supposed that, by this point, she probably had to hide her emotions for so long that it was easy not to cry. He thought that was actually pretty sad, that she’d lived such a rough life and no one knew for so long. However, there were plenty of people in the village who could sympathize with her, at least to a certain extent.

“Sakura...” Sakura shook her head at Tenten. 

“It’s fine, Tenten, really. I heard yours and Neji’s conversation so I know he was taken by the ANBU Black Ops so it’s fine.” Sakura sat next to Tenten and leaned her head on her fist. “I suppose it would be worse if he had been my real father...” She paused a moment before realizing that was not common knowledge. She hadn’t shared that with anyone, only Kakashi would know because it had come up at her mothers funeral. “My real father was killed when I was younger, my mother married this man after my father had died.”

“You never objected?”

“Nothing bad happened before they were married. It was only after that we had the problems. And by that point, it was too late to do anything. We were too scared of what he would do if we tried to stop him.” She sighed, it was somewhat weird telling them all of this, but she had wanted to say something for a while to Kakashi-Sensei. She decided she owed her Sensei an apology, she had seen the look on his face. He obviously felt horrible about the whole thing.

“So... what are you going to do now that he’s gone? I doubt you’ll want to go back, and you know you’re always welcome here-” Sakura interrupted Tenten. She actually did want to go back home. She no longer needed constant supervision, or constant help, so she could go back.

“No, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I don’t want to burden you any longer. He’ll probably be killed, or locked away, by the ANBU soon, so I know that I’m perfectly safe. I’ll probably just go back home or something.” Tenten tried to protest but Sakura wouldn’t let her. “Thank you so much though. For everything. I really appreciate it all.” She went over and hugged Tenten. Tenten hugged her friend back and smiled at her.

“You’re always welcome here, Sakura. You know that.” Sakura nodded and smiled at her friend, and went to pack the things she had brought to Tenten’s apartment. Well, actually, Kakashi and Sasuke had packed her things for her so she wouldn’t have to go back into the house. And now, here she was, willingly going back. Oh if they could see her now. They’d probably be pretty annoyed with her.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

As she walked in the door and headed upstairs, she looked around. The house looked the way it did when he had nearly killed her. She could see where he had done most of the damage, and she suddenly became nervous as she walked up the stairs. She scanned the house, seeing each small piece out of place left by the attack. Where he’d thrown her against the wall. Where he’d nearly choked her. It was all right there in front of her.

She took a deep breath and continued up the stairs. Each step used to bring her fear, now she was filled with wonder. What had happened that she would never remember? After she had lost consciousness? She got to her bedroom door, and shivered. She knew she would have to face this. She knew that when she told Tenten she was moving back into her old house. Now, she’d have to face it. And when she walked into her room, she just stopped and stared.

Her room was an absolute disaster. It was obvious there had been a fight, and as her eyes scanned the room she couldn’t help but wonder. Just how far had Sasuke gone to get her out of her situation? How much damage had been inflicted? She saw quite a bit of blood, probably from all three of them. She put down her bag and started to clean the room. She knew she would need to clean the whole house, but the rest of the rooms could wait.

As she cleaned, she remembered all of the things he had done to her. Especially on her own bed. She got upset and, in a spur of the moment decision, she ripped the sheets and blankets off of her bed before she could think about it. The act cleared her head, and she decided to get rid of them. They were tainted. Filthy. She brought them downstairs and outside and stuffed them in the trashcan. She pulled spare sheets and blankets out of her closet and made up her bed again.

She finished cleaning the floor, having difficulty getting some of the stains out. Many of them were bloodstains, which she could get out with no problem. Being a ninja meant she saw her fair share of bloodstains. There were also some stains that looked like alcohol, which took some work to get out.

When she had finished she sat down on the bed and looked over at her desk. Sitting on the desk was a single kunai. She walked over and held it in her hand. It was the one her father gave her after she entered the academy. She had it in a case, but the glass had probably broken in the fight. She noticed that it had been placed carefully, like Kakashi or Sasuke knew it was probably special to her.

She dragged the kunai across her wrist, not really sure why she was doing it, but remembering how the pain had felt while on the escort mission. She smiled as blood swelled on her wrist, feeling only slightly guilty about using the kunai her father gave her. She rinsed it off in the sink and bandaged her arm. She wrapped everything from just below the elbow to the wrist so it would look like a supportive bandage. She smiled again at her handiwork. No one would suspect a thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so... Like a million apologies guys! I know it's been a while. But my computer died so I had to get a new one and we had to order it and by the time the new one came in my muse had sort of flown the coop. I had also initially intended to write a whole new chapter for you guys but that didn't really happen... Still I hope this was acceptable for you!


	7. A "Fresh" Start

She could hardly believe it had been three years since he left. Naruto had been back for a year, she’d been training under Tsunade and working in the hospital, and Sasuke was a missing nin. She was walking out of the hospital one night when an obviously drunk man walked towards her, clucking his tongue. She recognized him instantly and shook her head.

“Not again...” She mumbled to herself. She smiled at him, and waved to get his attention. She’d talked to him a few times while he was sober, and he was actually very nice. He usually apologized for the way he acted while he was drunk. They had made an agreement while he was sober, so that no one would have to be a ‘victim’ of his drunk self. She had agreed, only because he never actually tried anything, just felt her up slightly and flirted with her, which wasn’t really all that bad in the grand scheme of things.

His voice was slurring, and he tended to drag his words out when he was wasted. She sighed and went over to him and started to walk him home. As she walked she wondered how Naruto and the tracking team were doing. Information on Sasuke’s possible whereabouts had reached the village, and they were out looking for him. Naruto had accompanied Shino, Hinata, and Kiba, in the search for their old teammate. She hadn’t said anything about it but she didn’t really want them to find him. Not anymore anyway.

_“Sasuke... Where are you going?!” I’d left in a hurry, and my bandages were falling off of my arm. I wiped some tears away quickly and they fell off completely. I put my left arm behind myself quickly, but he noticed something was up. The movement was awkward and hurried. Clearly, I was hiding something. I knew that I was, but I didn’t want him to know._

_“Sakura, what’s that on your arm?” I shook my head at Sasuke, I didn’t want him to know. I didn’t want anyone to know! That was why I had the bandages. So no one would find out._

_“There’s nothing on my-” I was cut off by Sasuke’s hand grabbing my arm and pulling it in front of me. He saw all the scars and even the fresh injuries that graced my pale skin. The fresh ones opened, and began to bleed, when he pulled my arm. He looked at me with a shocked, and possibly even hurt, expression._

_“Sakura. What are these?” I didn’t want to say anything, but he seemed so angry and upset. I looked down, already starting to hate myself. He pulled my arm close to his face and examined the injuries closer. I tried to pull my arm away but he kept a firm grip as he twisted my arm ever so slightly to get another angle. It hurt, but only a little. “Sakura? What. Are. These?” I could tell he knew what they were but he probably wanted to hear it from me. Not that I would tell him so easily._

_“They’re cuts.” It wasn’t a lie. I just wasn’t saying everything. I was doing everything I could to avoid telling him the whole truth. He rolled his eyes at me, and asked another question. Specific enough to get all the information he wanted. All the information I didn’t want to give._

_“And who made them?” I knew he would ask that, he wasn’t an idiot. I would never take him for one. I sighed, I was backed into a corner. I whispered my answer, prolonging the inevitable._

_“I did.” He told me to say it louder. I refused at first, but the look in his eyes was hard to ignore. He seemed truly concerned, something I didn’t think was possible for him. The look, not the feeling. He’d already proved he could be concerned when he saved me from my father. “I did.” I said it louder, definitely loud enough for him to hear me. He dropped my arm and turned away from me quickly. He seemed... upset. “Don’t tell me you’re going to just walk away! You’re not going to yell at me for hurting myself, or anything like that?” He turned to face me again. I wasn’t sure what made me say it, but I kind of regretted it._

_“Why should I? What the hell would it do anyway? You’d still do it.” I knew he was right, but he seemed sad. I thought it was strange, his words said he was angry but his voice said he was sad. I was about to say something when he got close to me again. “You don’t get it.” That just sounded... angry. He seemed very angry with me, and I wasn’t sure I liked it._

_“What don’t I get?” He shook his head at me and walked away. I chased after him again, trying to catch up. I didn’t like being kept in the dark, and I was trying to keep him from leaving. Keep him from going wherever it was that he was going. He was behind me before I even knew what was happening. He said ‘thank you’ and the next thing I remembered I was waking up on the bench._

_*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*_

_Two years later I was walking home from a tough day of training with Lady Tsunade. It was exactly two years from the day Sasuke left the Leaf. I had waited two years, with no luck. No sign of Sasuke. I spent the past two years waiting for him, I’d even tried to stop cutting. But I usually ended up doing it anyway. Not often, but maybe once a week. And I showed a lot of restraint. I wanted so hard to prove him wrong when he came back._

_“Why do you keep waiting Sakura?” I turned to see Hinata behind me. I turned back and kept walking. Hinata put a hand on my shoulder. “How do you plan on getting better in training if you’re so hung up on Sasuke?” I noticed Hinata’s lack of stuttering. It had kind of ceased after Naruto left. And after Neji had stopped treating her like she was a piece of shit at everything she tried to do. He was actually a pretty nice guy once he’d gotten over the whole destiny thing. I mean, I’d already known he was alright but now everyone knew._

_“What do you mean?”_

_“Isn’t it hard to focus on training if you’re always thinking about him?” She looked at me questioningly, before excusing herself. She was meeting with her team. I waved goodbye, and went home. She was right. Sasuke wasn’t coming back, and if he did, why should I care? He didn’t! I grabbed my kunai, and pulled it sharply across my arm. I no longer cared what anyone thought of my habit. It worked for me, it helped me, and that was all that mattered. I just hoped Hinata never found out that this conversation really brought back the return of my habit._

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

She was upset with Sasuke Uchiha. He made it seem like he cared, but then he left everyone! He knew that she needed him to stay, that she wanted him to stay, yet he still left them all. She brought the drunk man home and let him into the house. She closed the door behind her, and locked it, hiding the spare key again.

The next morning she was getting ready to go into the hospital for work when there was a knock on her door. She sighed and answered it, surprised to see Naruto standing there. She raised an eyebrow, and decided to let him in while she finished getting ready. This certainly wasn’t the first time he’d done it, so it wasn’t actually that big of deal. She picked up a piece of fruit and tossed it to him. The only fruit she had ever gotten Naruto to eat, simply because she refused to let him eat ramen when she saw him in the morning.

“What are you doing here Naruto?” She asked as she peeled her own piece of fruit to eat. She had an orange, and he had an apple. He had already bitten into the apple, and finished chewing and swallowing before answering her. That was another habit she seemed to have ridden him of. He never talked with his mouth full. At least, not around her.

“What do you mean? I always come and visit you in the morning.” She sighed and shook her head, wondering if he had really already forgotten about the mission he was just on. Last night, for that matter. As of last night, he was still gone, away looking for their old teammate. While it was true that he did often visit her before she went off to work, he was just away on a mission for almost two weeks. She pointed a slice of her orange at him and responded.

“As of yesterday, you were still on a mission. One that was supposed to last about a month according to Lady Tsunade.” She bit into the orange slice she had pointed at him, and Naruto laughed and took another bite of his apple as Sakura excused herself to get her medical jacket from her bedroom. When she came back he answered her, almost immediately.

“We got back late last night, but I wanted to see you before you left your house today, and Granny Tsunade said you had the early shift today.” Naruto yawned, showing just how little sleep he had gotten just to come and see her this morning. She nodded and yawned as well, considering she’d worked pretty late last night. Unfortunately they were short-staffed at the moment so Sakura was working a lot of hours, and most of them were late ones. She was pretty sure she was on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion at any moment.

“Well, obviously, she wasn’t lying. What do you want Naruto? You wouldn’t wake up this early, especially after getting back from a mission late at night, unless it was really important.” He nodded at Sakura, his face suddenly very serious, and she wondered what he had to tell her. The look on his face was pretty abnormal. He took a deep breath and started speaking.

“The mission was successful. Sasuke is back, and Granny Tsunade is allowing him to remain a citizen. And eventually, become a shinobi again. I wasn’t there but apparently he was extremely apologetic.” Sakura faltered for a moment as she put on her medical jacket. She composed herself quickly, however, and started to walk towards the door. Naruto was following close behind her.

“Okay. Is that all?” Naruto had an obvious look of shock on his face. She shook her head at him. “Naruto, I really don’t care anymore. I won’t kill him on the streets or anything like that, but really, I don’t care. Thank you for warning me, but if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to work.” She walked outside, and Naruto left as well. She locked the door behind her and headed to the hospital, leaving Naruto standing outside her house with a look of pure shock on his face.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

It had been a little over a month since Naruto came back from the mission. A little over a month since Sasuke had returned to the village, and Sakura still hadn’t said a word to him. She even refused to speak about him when she was with her friends. She avoided the topic altogether. She got glances of him walking through the village, usually with an ANBU member and occasionally Naruto, sometimes even both at the same time, but she avoided him at all costs. She wanted nothing to do with him.

At the moment, Sakura was standing in the Hokage’s office, waiting for Lady Tsunade to get there. She had been requested yet the Hokage was late. She wondered what was keeping her. Just then, Lady Tsunade walked in with Shizune behind her. She apologized for being late, saying she had met with the elders. Sakura nodded in understanding before speaking.

“You asked for me, M’lady?” Tsunade nodded and sat down in her chair.

“I’ve been asked if I could send a representative from the hospital to pitch medical ninjutsu studies again this year to the students that are about to take the genin exam at the academy. We want to be able to have as many medics as possible in the upcoming teams. I’ve chosen you to do it this year. It’s tomorrow, right after lunch.” Sakura nodded.

“Yes, M’lady.” She left, after being told the basics of what she should say tomorrow, and walked towards the academy. The students were outside, and she watched them play. It reminded her of her academy days. She tried to block out the memories that involved Sasuke but it was difficult. She decided to stop reminiscing and just enjoy watching the children play. She smiled at them, enjoying the view of happy children, when she heard a voice behind her. Or, rather, next to her.

“Reminds you of the good ol’ days doesn’t it?” She turned and saw Ino next to her, leaning against the fence like she was. She hadn’t seen Ino in a couple of weeks because her friend had been out on missions. She nodded and turned to look at the children again. “How are you doing?”

“About the same as always. Although, Lady Tsunade has me pitching medical ninjutsu to the students at the academy tomorrow, so I may be able to catch up on some sleep tonight.” She laughed a little and so did Ino. Ino’s face then turned serious, and Sakura wondered what was going on.

“That’s not what I meant. I’ve spoken to Sasuke.” Sakura’s face darkened at the mention of Sasuke’s name. She turned to look at Ino, and Ino looked at her. “He misses you, but apparently he knows you don’t want to see him. I bet Naruto let that slip by mistake.” Sakura shrugged, she didn’t care if he knew or not. She couldn’t care less about Sasuke Uchiha.

“Well I guess you’ll end up with him. You’re probably the only girl that doesn’t hate him right now. I’ve seen the way people look at him.” Ino sighed at her best friend, she hated that she had become this way. She missed the old, happy, Sakura. This Sakura never seemed happy.

“You mean, the same way you do?” Sakura just nodded, and pushed herself off of the fence. She didn’t want to talk about Sasuke, she didn’t want to think about Sasuke. She just wanted to focus on the pitch tomorrow. Or anything else. Just not Sasuke Uchiha. She was done with him.

“I have to work on the pitch for the academy. I’ll talk to you later.” She turned and walked towards her house. As soon as she was out of Ino’s sight, she started to run. She ran and ran, and ended up at training ground 7. Her old training site. She was shocked to see Sasuke sparring with Kakashi. She hid behind a tree as she tried to catch her breath.

“Hey.” She nearly shrieked when she heard a voice. Her already pounding heart seemed to have stopped for a moment at the sudden voice. She turned and saw Naruto, and punched him in the face before she had a chance to think about the decision. Naruto grabbed his cheek in pain. “Ow! What the hell was that for!?” He was whispering loudly at Sakura. She felt kind of bad, but not too much. He had snuck up on her, after all.

“You scared the crap out of me!” She was whispering loudly as well, so that they wouldn’t be heard. Luckily, the sparring people were making enough noise that they couldn’t hear anything else. She looked at Naruto then at Kakashi and Sasuke, then back to Naruto. “Why is Sasuke sparring with Kakashi?”

“He’s on a type of probation for six months. They give him more and more freedom every month and he’s allowed to train now. Granny wants Sasuke to keep being a ninja, she says that we can’t afford to lose him. He’s really powerful.” Sakura sighed, she supposed she couldn’t argue with that, it was a solid reason for keeping him here. And for allowing him to remain a shinobi.

“Well, why are you here, Naruto?” Naruto groaned at the question. He looked extremely annoyed, and Sakura wondered what would cause that. She raised an eyebrow at her teammate. “What?”

“Guess who gets to take the bell test... Again.” Sakura’s eyes widened and she stifled laughter. Naruto glared at Sakura, and spoke without thinking about what he was saying until it was too late to take it back. “Well you’d be taking it too if it wasn’t for-” He stopped himself quickly, not wanting to continue.

“For what?” Sakura had a feeling she knew what Naruto was about to say, but she still wanted to hear him say it. Besides, she was kind of hoping that she was wrong, but the odds of that were slim.

“I told Granny about how you’re angry at Sasuke and she decided not to reinstate Team 7... Well... Team Kakashi.” Sakura wasn’t all that surprised by what Naruto said. It was what she was expecting to hear. Although she was slightly annoyed that he told Lady Tsunade about her feelings towards Sasuke. Those were personal, but if he felt it would affect the team he would say something. It was only logical. “We have no one else for the team now, she doesn’t know what to do.” Sakura sighed.

“I’ll do it.” Naruto’s eyes widened in shock. He looked at her like she had just told him she was part sea lion. She raised an eyebrow at the blonde, whose eyes were practically bugging out of his head. She fought the urge to laugh at him, he truly looked hysterical.

“What did you say?” She rolled her eyes at Naruto. She couldn’t help but wonder just how idiotic he could be. What she had said wasn’t that complex! She’d just told him she would join the team. She honestly didn’t think it was that big of a deal. Besides, she missed going on missions, even if they wouldn’t be able to take missions right away, she was getting really tired of going to the hospital every day.

“I said that I’ll do it. I’ll be a part of the team... again.” Naruto seemed thrilled, he was finally understanding what she had told him. She couldn’t help but think ‘ _took you long enough_ ’.

“I’ll tell Granny!” He ran off before she could say anything else. Probably before she could change her mind about her decision, not that she would. She wouldn’t go back on what she said. About thirty minutes later he came running back to where Sakura had been. However, Sakura wasn’t there. Just then, something fell on his head, and he looked up. Sakura was sitting in the tree, though clearly the falling thing was an accident.

“Hey.” Naruto jumped into the tree and sat next to Sakura. Not shocking her nearly as much this time around.

“So I told Granny, and then I told her I wanted to surprise Kakashi. She agreed. Although... I think she was a little drunk.” Sakura giggled, not at all surprised that her former teacher was wasted. Even if it was only a little bit. Just then, a voice came over the sounds of their shared laughter.

“Naruto?” The two of them immediately stopped laughing. Naruto jumped down from the tree and walked over, scratching the back of his head. Sakura jumped down behind the tree so she could walk over to the group. Naruto talked to them for a couple of minutes before Sakura walked over to them.

“I’m not late am I?” The three men looked over at Sakura. Naruto was the only one who didn’t look confused. “What?” She looked at Naruto. “You said we started now, right?” Naruto nodded at Sakura. “They didn’t know, did they?” Naruto shook his head, enjoying their little game. Just then, he burst out laughing. Sakura sighed and walked over, shoving him a little.

“You... Should have... Seen... Your faces!” Sakura whacked him upside the head. He was being slightly annoying. And slightly idiotic as well. That, and she enjoyed beating Naruto up every now and again. He gave her a glare while he rubbed the back of his head.

“Idiot.” He groaned and stuck his tongue out at Sakura. She threatened him with a fist and he held up his hands in defeat. It was an amusing show to watch, but it confused the hell out of Sasuke. He had no idea they’d become that way. He last remembered Sakura practically hating Naruto. Although, she had also been more quiet and reserved back then.

“You two were messing with us, weren’t you?” Sakura nodded at Kakashi, who sighed at his two students. Well, former students. They seemed to be getting along just fine, even if Sakura did seem to enjoy beating on Naruto. He didn’t seem too bothered by it, it seemed to be all in good fun. Even if he usually did get decent injuries out of the beatings.

“Except, I really am here for the test. Too bad we can’t beat you like last time, Sensei. Jiraiya hasn’t written any new books.” She smirked and Kakashi looked slightly embarrassed. Sasuke looked at Kakashi, then at his two former teammates, wondering what the heck they were talking about.

“Eh, we’ll still find a way. I mean, you’re even stronger then you were before. I would know...” Naruto groaned, while rubbing his cheek. Behind his hand she could clearly see a large red mark from where she hit him. Sakura smirked at Naruto. Then she remembered something, and her face became serious. She was looking right at Naruto when she spoke.

“Please, just don’t Rasenshuriken our Sensei.” Kakashi’s one visible eye widened, and he looked at Naruto. He was obviously thinking the same thing. Naruto had figured out a way to use Rasenshuriken so he wouldn’t get hurt. He just had to use it in Sage Mode and he could throw it.

“Sakura, I’m not that dumb! If I knew not to do it when it could keep me from ever wielding chakra again, I’m pretty sure I can keep myself from brutally murdering our Sensei with it.” Sakura laughed, Kakashi looked slightly uncomfortable, and Sasuke just looked confused. And slightly scared of the blonde. He took a few steps away from Naruto, causing Sakura to giggle behind her hand.

“Well now that we got that out of the way... Shall we start?” The two genin and one chunin nodded at Kakashi. “Okay, you have to get the bells from me by sundown. Hopefully you all remember the rules. Alright... Start!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took so long. I'll be honest I was deciding what to do about continuing. Because I had a whole lot of the story written but wasn't sure if I wanted to deviate from canon so much. Well... I think you can see what my decision was.


	8. Annoying

Naruto and Sakura looked at Sasuke, wondering what he would do. If he ran off and tried to just attack, they’d probably back him up. This was, technically, his test. If he had his own plans on trying to defeat Kakashi they’d just follow along. Figure out a way to work with hi. Instead, however, _he_ turned to look at _them_ , something that shocked his two former teammates.

“Do we have a strategy?” Sakura was about to shake her head, when she realized something. This was not the place to be strategizing. They only had, maybe, six hours to get the bells. The last thing she wanted was Kakashi potentially overhearing their strategy. Or managing to read their lips with his sharingan. They would be much better off finding a place to hide while they worked out some kind of plan of attack.

“Lets do this somewhere else...” She nodded at Naruto, who had pretty much figured out her plan. He knew enough about her ton know how she could get them away from their former sensei. “Remember when you need to run?” Naruto nodded, Sasuke just seemed lost, which didn’t really shock her. She turned to face him for the first time in a while. “Naruto will help you, run north when Naruto tells you. I’ll follow soon enough.” They nodded and she pulled on her gloves.

Sakura gave a small smirk and starting building up chakra in her fist. She turned and jumped and as she came down again, she aimed her fist towards the ground. When she landed she released the chakra in her fist. As her fist, and her chakra, made contact with the ground it quaked. The ground itself broke up, creating a large dirt cloud that was near impossible to see through. Both Naruto and Sasuke used this as a cover to run north, and Sakura did the same thing.

When they met up, Sasuke looked impressed, and slightly terrified. It reminded her of the look on Naruto’s face when he had first witnessed her newfound strength. Though, seeing it on Sasuke’s face was interesting. And a sign to her that she had at least been doing something right in her training if she could impress _Sasuke_. Though she was trying to remind herself that she wasn’t a child and didn’t need to impress him. She just turned to Naruto and sighed. They needed a strategy or else they would never get the bells from Kakashi.

“So, Jiraiya really didn’t write anything new, right? Because a sudden brand new book would be perfect right now...” Naruto and Sakura both laughed, remembering when they had gotten the bells the last time. Naruto then shook his head.

“Nope, sorry. The only other thing would be a book I ghost wrote for him a while back, but that became a peace treaty...” Sakura and Sasuke looked at Naruto like he was crazy and Naruto just laughed. “Really long story. Hey at least he can’t try to use Sasuke against us this time. I’m pretty sure ‘I escaped from Orochimaru’ wouldn’t work!” Sakura stifled a giggle and Naruto just laughed.

“I can’t believe he thought we’d fall for that! I mean, for one, did he think Sasuke wouldn’t have grown at ALL? He looked exactly the same! In fact, it was almost the exact same genjutsu as the first bell test. The one where I fainted...” She paused for a moment, realizing what she’d just admitted out loud. “I probably should have kept that fact to myself...” Her face turned bright red. Naruto laughed a little, and Sasuke was confused again. Confused enough to just seem to forget that they had been talking about him in the third person. When he was standing right there.

“Well at least we won’t have to worry about the hand signs this time.” Sakura nodded in agreement, they had a way to get around that. They had Sasuke, who was still looking pretty confused. Sakura decided it was time to fill him in. Couldn’t have him out of the loop forever, even if it was somewhat amusing.

“This is the third time we’ve taken the bell test, Sasuke. The second time we took it we found out Kakashi can weave hand signs faster than the average human eye can follow. Luckily, your sharingan should be able to help with that. Now it’s just a matter of Naruto and myself working around those hand signs.” Sasuke looked like he was thinking about something.

“I have an idea. I can make a hand sign that will tell you what element he’s about to use. That way you can prepare for that element. Other than that there’s really not much else I can do.” They nodded in agreement. It wasn’t much, but honestly they knew a lot of Kakashi’s usual tricks. If they know they element they could probably figure out what to prepare for. Obviously he had a lot of things they hadn’t seen yet, but it would likely be of some help. It was better than nothing.

“Try to communicate as best we can. I say we split up, not too far though. Just enough to distract him. But first...” Naruto made a hand sign. “Shadow Clone Jutsu!” About five more Naruto’s appeared. They ran off in different directions, and a few minutes later Naruto nodded. “I know where he is.”

The group sat there strategizing the best way to distract and defeat him for the next fifteen minutes or so. They didn’t know each other as well as they used to, not the three of them anyway. They needed to figure out how to work as a three man cell again.. They decided Sasuke would be best for a frontal attack because of his sharingan. Sakura would attack from above because of her chakra filled punches. Naruto could attack from any and all sides because of his shadow clones.

They surrounded Kakashi and prepared their attacks. Sasuke went first, to try and get him to exhaust his chakra deflecting his attacks. Sasuke used his Fireball Jutsu, and his Phoenix Flower Jutsu. Both fire techniques, because he wasn’t sure how well his lightning styles would work considering most of them were more localized attacks. However, he did follow up with Chidori Senbon.

After he was done throwing his attacks at Kakashi, Sakura came in from above with her chakra filled fist. Unfortunately he dodged it, however he was caught in the destroyed ground that resulted from his dodge. Naruto took this opportunity to get him with a Rasengan. Surprisingly, it connected.

The three of them managed to get the bells from him just as the sun began to set. They looked at each other, proud of themselves. Kakashi nodded at them, and told them to go home and get some rest. As they were walking back Sakura sighed heavily, earning looks from her new, and old, teammates.

“Rest? Right, like that will happen anytime soon.” Her comment was more annoyed than anything else, she didn’t want to sound like she was looking for sympathy or anything like that.n Though, Naruto did give Sakura a sympathetic look, and Sasuke just looked confused again. She had to admit, she really kind of liked seeing Sasuke confused. It wasn’t usually a common occurrence, and she knew it wouldn’t last forever. She knew it was wrong to enjoy his confusion but she couldn’t help it so she figured she might as well enjoy it as much as she can, while it lasts.

“Work in the morning?” Sakura shook her head and Naruto raised an eyebrow. He seemed a little confused as to why she wouldn’t be getting rest if she didn’t have work in the morning. Which was valid. She sort of had work, but it wasn’t at the hospital, and it wasn’t painfully early. It was more of the fact that she would be going to sleep very late tonight.

“I have a pitch to work on.” Naruto looked at her with a questioning face. She thought he would have known what she was talking about. Clearly he needed more information. “For the academy. Lady Tsunade has me doing the medical ninjutsu pitch this year.” Naruto raised his eyebrows and widened his eyes.

“That’s great! She or Shizune usually do it, right? That means she trusts you... Right?” Sakura shrugged, she was kind of glad, but she didn’t really like the burden. Her pitch could possibly decide the fate of quite a few of the upcoming genin teams. If she screwed up the pitch more lives could be lost than if she didn’t, she was sure of it. This pitch could be the deciding factor for these student. Whether or not they chose to even consider studying medical ninjutsu would be determined by what she did tomorrow. She sighed again.

“I guess. I mean, it’s just a lot of responsibility, you know? I don’t want to risk fucking it up...” She looked over at the boys, wondering what they were thinking. Sometimes she felt like she complained too much, that she was making a big deal out of nothing. There were probably much worse problems going on right now and she was worried about something that was really an accomplishment.

“Try not to think about it that way, Sakura.” She just nodded at Naruto, getting annoyed with herself. She hated that she was complaining so much, and just wanted to stop talking. Even though Naruto gave no indication that her complaints and concerns were stupid, she still felt like they were. When they arrived at her house she waved good bye and went up the stairs to her door. She went inside and closed the door behind her. She felt like such an annoyance.

The next day she gave her pitch at the academy. As she walked out of the building she let out a sigh of relief. She walked slowly back to her house, trying to block out the sounds of everyone around her. She was happy that she was done with the pitch, but she was worried. She was worried that she could have screwed it up or that she said too much or not enough, but most of all, she hated that she was always worrying about things.

She often wished to be more like Ino, or even more like Naruto. Naruto never worried about trivial things like she did. Neither did Ino. She was jealous of Ino because of her self-confidence. She sighed and went to her house, and crawled into bed. She was finally going to get some decent sleep.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Sakura was sitting on a swing, dragging her feet in the dirt. The last few months had been pretty uneventful in Konoha, and her hours at the hospital were lessened because of it. She was glad to not have to work as much, but then she realized she had nothing to do. It actually depressed her even more than having work all the time. She actually missed working at the hospital as often as she used to. She sighed and stood up, wondering what she could do.

The moon was full tonight, giving off a decent amount of light. She looked up at the sky, wishing she could stop being like this. She just wanted to be confident, and she just wanted to get rid of her past. Unfortunately, it crept up on her every second of every day. There was always some small reminder that caused her to feel depressed. She sometimes wondered if she was being selfish.

She had considered bringing up her concerns about her emotions with Lady Tsunade, but she’d ultimately decided against it. She wasn’t sure how the Hokage would react, but she was almost certain she’d just get laughed at or something. Just being sad all the time wasn’t really a medical emergency. Besides, Lady Tsunade would know if something was really wrong, right? Or someone at the hospital would have noticed something? Either way, she’d decided it just wasn’t important enough to warrant visiting the Hokage.

She walked home, only paying slight attention to the things going on around her. She walked up the stairs robotically and walked into the house. She sat on her bed and just stared at the wall for a minute. She was thinking about a conversation between Naruto and Sasuke that she had overheard a while back.

_“Sakura’s been acting really weird lately.”_

_“Really? I guess I wouldn’t know. I mean, I was gone for three years, and lets face it I wasn’t exactly making a lot of attempts to get to know her before I left. Not as many as you were anyway. You always knew her better.”_

_“Says the guy who figured out her… ‘Family issues’ first.”_

_“That’s not the same thing.”_

_“Either way… She’s been... Different.”_

_“How so?”_

_“I don’t know... She just... Seems... Quieter? More distant? I’m not sure exactly. I mean... I was gone for a while as well, but she’s still acting strange. It’s really hard to explain…”_

Sasuke wouldn’t know, she wouldn’t expect him to even with everything he’d figured out. He’d figured it out because of circumstance, not from his attempts to actually get to know her. He had his own things he was dealing with. But she couldn’t help but wonder what Naruto meant by different. Was it bad or good? She couldn’t be sure.

That had been about a month ago, and she hadn’t seen them since then. She’d just said goodbye and was still just within earshot to hear that part of the conversation. They likely assumed she couldn’t hear them. She didn’t really want to talk to them after that, even though she wasn’t angry at them. She just didn’t want company. She dealt with the people at the hospital, but she preferred to be alone these days.

As she watched the wall, she wondered if they would notice if she left. Who would notice if she suddenly vanished into thin air. She couldn’t quite understand her thoughts, and it was like she couldn’t control them. She looked at the medical ninja supplies in front of her, realizing she had the ability to make some pretty deadly poisons. She smacked her head, trying to force away the thoughts, but the longer she looked, the more tempting it was.

She unravelled her bandages on her left arm, tracing the scars that were drawn over the skin. She pulled out her kunai, dragging it across her wrist. She noticed how dangerously close she was to the vein, but it was like her hand was moving on its own. The next thing she knew there was more blood on the bed than usual. She dropped the kunai on the bed, and ran to the bathroom. She grabbed a towel, trying her best to staunch the blood flow.

As the towel slowly started to stain red she wondered why she was doing this. Why was she trying so hard to save herself? Save herself... from herself? Stop the bleeding? And why was she not just healing herself? Why did she care? Why did it matter? She didn’t see much point in living, though she didn’t see much point in dying either. She took the towel off of her arm and examined the cut. It certainly wasn’t enough to kill her, not for a while anyway but she knew it would be close. Even after two minutes it was still bleeding quite a bit, though definitely less than it was before. Clearly, she had hit something major subconsciously.

She was trying to decide what to do when she noticed her vision blacking from the corners of her eyes. She was reminded of when her father had choked her, and nearly killed her, and suddenly that was all she saw. All she was thinking about was him, and death. It was in that moment that she decided death was alright. She didn’t really care one way or the other, honestly. She fumbled for the kunai through her diminishing vision.

When she located the sharp object, she quickly slit the other wrist, this time consciously making certain to hit the vein. She saw stars as pain washed over her, but she knew it would end soon enough. As she slowly felt her life slipping away, she heard a male voice scream for help. That same voice then said something else, this time she couldn’t quite make out what was being said. Everything, even sound, was becoming more fuzzy and difficult to understand. The owner of the voice then grabbed at her arms, trying to stop the blood flow from them. She could make out the basic shape of the person, but couldn’t tell who it was.

“No... Don’t...” The unknown male shook his head and she felt something wet hit her face. Was the person crying? For her? She didn’t want to believe it, she wanted to die with no regrets. She suddenly felt a warmth on her arms that she recognized instantly. Someone was obviously using medical ninjutsu to save her. She wanted to tell them to stop but something in her wouldn’t let her. She felt tired, very tired, and she let herself fall asleep.


	9. Learn to Recover

When she woke up, she was in the hospital. She hated being in the hospital, at least as a patient. She’d had to get used to working there, and she had. She just never wanted to be in one of those sterile, white, beds again. The last time this had happened, her father had nearly killed her, and she had to be reminded of that. She didn’t enjoy remembering that time in her life. This time, though, she knew exactly why she was here, and she was a little more than slightly annoyed. She turned her head and saw Kakashi-Sensei sitting in a chair next to her hospital bed. He looked as if he was fast asleep.

“Kakashi-Sensei?” She spoke quietly. He looked up at the sound of her voice and she knew he wasn’t really asleep. She told herself that he had been trying to go to sleep to make it seem a little less weird. Either that or he was just a very light sleeper, which also made sense, being a ninja he needed to be on alert. He stood up and walked over to her, sitting down on the bed, at her feet.

“Yes?” She wondered if he was the mystery man who had saved her. He was the only one, who she could think of anyway, who could have gotten someone knowledgable in medical ninjutsu (Namely, the Hokage) to her that quickly. However, why would he have been crying? Naruto, she could understand, but Kakashi-Sensei? It just didn’t make sense. She’d never seen him cry the entire time she’d had him as a Sensei.

“How long have I been here?” He looked slightly confused by her question. Like he expected something else. Probably expected her to ask what happened, but she knew what happened to her. She was completely aware of what had happened. She knew what she had done to herself. His face straightened out, however, and he answered her question.

“A few hours.” It had to have been him, then. If someone else had saved her they’d probably still be here. Most people who save people and take them to the hospital stick around for a while. She was a little surprised that Naruto wasn’t here, but if he hadn’t noticed her for a month, why would he suddenly notice something now? “Can I ask you a question?” She nodded at him so, after a little hesitation, he asked. “Why did you do it?”

“Why?” He nodded at her, and she suddenly wished she had said he couldn’t ask. She really wasn’t entirely sure herself, and she didn’t feel completely comfortable answering him. “I don’t know.” Kakashi looked really confused, and she felt the same way. She was wondering why she had done it too. “It just kind of... happened. And I was okay with it. With dying I mean.”

“Well, why were you okay with dying?” She had to admit, he was doing a good job of getting her to speak, and asking questions that would get answers. And she was actually somewhat willing to answer him. She wasn’t sure why she trusted him so much with all of the information she was giving him, but she did. She was alright with talking to him.

“I’m just sick of it...” She trailed off, looking down at her lap, wishing she could end the conversation then. But she knew Kakashi-Sensei wouldn’t let that happen. He wanted details and he would do whatever he had to do to get them. She just wasn’t entirely sure why he cared so much.

“Sick of what?” She didn’t want to respond, she just wanted to close her mouth and stay silent. It had worked for years. However, for some reason, her mouth seemed to have a mind of its own. It was like she wanted to just tell him everything. She was talking before she could stop herself.

“Living? I guess... I don’t know. I’m just... sad... all of the time, and I don’t even know why. Nothing I do makes me happy anymore so I just pretend.” All of that came out so fast even Sakura was confused. She wasn’t sure why she had blurted all of that out to Kakashi-Sensei. She had done a good job so far of hiding her emotions from the people around her. Then again, she really hadn’t seen much of her team in the past month, so it was easy to hide from them. She usually had trouble keeping secrets from her teammates.

“Well, why didn’t you tell anyone you were feeling like that?” She shook her head at Kakashi-Sensei. She didn’t want people to know about it, she didn’t want to seem weak. She was weak for so long, and she thought she had ditched that part of her. Now, here she was, weak once again. And she hated it. She hated the way she felt, and she was embarrassed by it. Besides, she didn’t really think it was that big of a deal in the long run.

“Why? Why should I? Is it really that big of a deal?” Kakashi was visibly shocked at her response. He really hadn’t expected something like that to come out of Sakura’s mouth, ever. She was a medical ninja, didn’t she recognize an issue when she saw one? He supposed that maybe she just didn’t want to admit she had a problem. Kakashi stood up quickly, and turned his body to face his student. Even behind the mask, Sakura could see he was shocked, and even the slightest bit angry. She couldn’t quite figure out his emotions right now.

“Is it that big of a deal? That big of a deal!? You were minutes...” He paused for a second, with a finger in the air. “No... seconds, from death by your own hand when I found you! You don’t think that constitutes as a big deal!?” Kakashi regretted raising his voice but he was extremely emotional right now. He supposed it had to do with the memories of his father that were rising up from this. His father had taken his own life, and he’d almost seen his student do the same thing.

“Why does it even matter!? Why couldn’t you just let me die!? Couldn’t you see that was what I wanted!?” Tears were streaming down her face, and she wasn’t quite sure why it was such a big deal to her. All she knew is that she was tired of everything. Nothing made her happy, so why bother? Kakashi sat back down again, head in his hands. Even behind his mask, she could see the worry on his face. The concern for her. Concern she just couldn’t comprehend.

“I will never let someone I care about take their own life ever again.” Sakura’s eyes widened, then grew small as she thought about what he said. What did he mean by ‘again’? She sat up a little bit in her bed, and propped herself up against the back so she was sitting up straight. She felt weak, but she didn’t care. She was comfortable sitting up.

“Again, Kakashi-Sensei?” Sakura was curious as to what he was talking about. She watched his face, trying to see behind the damned mask that he wore. It was difficult to read his facial expressions, which always annoyed her, but she had gotten pretty good at it over the years. Kakashi seemed hesitant to say anything, but after a few minutes he started to speak.

“When I was very young... My father took his own life. Sakura... I am not about to lose someone else too. Especially not one of my own students. Not if there’s anything I can do about it.” She covered her mouth with her hand and her eyes widened again. The news completely shocked her. She lowered her hand and looked at Kakashi with sympathy.

“I’m sorry... I... I didn’t know...” Kakashi smiled, and shook his head at his pink haired former student. She wasn’t sure why she was apologizing, she definitely wasn’t sorry because she tried to kill herself. She honestly wished he hadn’t found her. She honestly wished she could have died. She supposed she was apologizing for his loss, or for not knowing, but she wasn’t entirely sure.

“It’s not your fault, Sakura. Anyway... Lady Tsunade is working on taking care of you. Unfortunately, your suicide attempt can’t be ignored. They’re moving you to another area of the hospital once you’re well enough.” Sakura gritted her teeth in annoyance. She knew exactly what that ‘other area’ of the hospital was. She was not about to get put into the psych ward!

“I refuse to be moved to the psych ward. I’m not crazy!” She knew it sounded ridiculous, especially since she worked at the hospital, but it still pissed her off. Kakashi sighed and looked over at Sakura sadly. He supposed that was a normal reaction for anyone in Sakura’s situation. But he felt so bad, mainly because he felt like he should have known about how she was feeling. He should have seen it. He realized he’d been feeling this with most of his students, and thought it was just a little strange.

“No one is accusing you of being crazy. Sakura, this is serious, and needs to be taken care of. You’ve clearly been suffering, and we just want to help. You’ll be allowed to have visitors, and you’ll be taking care of yourself. They’re just moving you to a place where they can make sure you don’t hurt yourself again.” He put a hand on her arm, and smiled at her from behind his mask. Sakura looked down, fighting tears. This lead Kakashi to tell her about what he wanted her to do. “I’m giving you some ‘rules’ to follow while you’re in here. And when you get out.” Sakura looked up in surprise, and confusion.

“What kind of rules?” She asked, mainly out of curiosity. She wasn’t sure if she’d even follow these rules he was going to set out for her. It wasn’t like he’d know, right? She couldn’t be sure.  
“Rules that should help you get better, and rule number one is that you’re not allowed to hide your feelings. From here on out you cry when you’re sad, yell if you’re angry, and tell people how you feel. No matter what, you tell them what you’re thinking, you’d be surprised just how much that will help you.” She nodded at him, deciding that the first rule shouldn’t be too hard to follow, if she even did. She was still debating whether or not she would.

“Anything else?” Kakashi looked thoughtful for a minute before nodding his head.

“Every day, I want you to think about the people that care about you. Because no one wants you to die. If you need a reason to live, think of the people who care. Because they exist.” She nodded, not sure that the second rule was quite as easy to follow. She decided she wanted to ask him about something she remembered from right before she fell asleep.

“Also... Kakashi-Sensei...” He gave her a questioning look. “Were you... Crying? When you found me?” Kakashi seemed taken aback by her question. Like he thought she didn’t know, or hoped that she hadn’t noticed. He really had hoped she didn’t know that he’d been crying. Clearly she had been conscious enough to realize that he had been crying while he saved her. He didn’t really want to admit it, but there was nothing he could do.

“Yes. Yes I was.” She didn’t seem weirded out, just a little surprised. He didn’t quite understand. He figured most students would find it weird that their teacher would cry because of them. Especially when their teacher was not known to be the emotional type. He certainly did his best to hide his emotions from his students.

“Why?” He stood up and started walking towards the door, knowing the conversation was almost finished. Before he left, however, he turned his head to face Sakura. He just had to answer her question.

“Because I care.” He smiled at Sakura beneath the mask, partly at the strange face she was making, and turned back towards the door. He walked out, leaving Sakura alone to think, and to rest.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The next day, she woke up to the sound of knocking at her door. She gave a small ‘come in’ and when the door opened, she was surprised to see Sasuke standing there. Even more surprised to see him sans guard. Naruto wasn’t even with him. She raised an eyebrow at him, wondering where his guards were. He ignored her raised eyebrow and continued what he was doing.

“I see you don’t have company. I didn’t know you were allowed to be by yourself now.” He just nodded at her, and walked into the room. He closed the door behind him and grabbed a chair. He pulled it closer to Sakura, and when he sat down, Sakura got herself into a sitting position to talk to him better. There was silence for a minute, but when Sasuke spoke it shocked Sakura.

“I was hoping you’d stopped.” Sakura turned her head quickly as his voice broke the silence. It took her a minute to process what Sasuke had just said. When she did finally put the pieces together, she was surprised. She thought he’d probably forgotten about what she had been doing. What she continued to do, without his or anyone else’s knowledge.

“What?”

“I was hoping you’d stopped. Stupid hope, really.” She looked down at her arms, both of which were bandaged somewhat heavily. However, the bandages only covered her wrists, where the fatal cuts had been made, so her left arm was almost completely exposed. The scars and fresh marks went rather far up her arm, all the way to her elbow. She never realized just how much she injured herself. The scars were extremely close together, and she noticed there wasn’t much bare skin left on her left arm. She shook her head at him after a minute or so of just looking.

“I don’t blame you for hoping. You’re allowed to hope for something. It’s just that... Sometimes hope leads to hurt. Most of the time... Actually...” She was forcing back tears when she heard Kakashi’s voice in her head telling her to not hold anything back. To show her emotions, even when she didn’t really want to. It took a minute, but she finally allowed the tears to fall freely, and Sasuke stood up quickly. She expected him to leave, but he walked over to the crying kunoichi, and pulled her into a hug, shocking the girl even more.

“I’m sorry.” She wanted to say something but instead she wrapped her arms around her teammate and cried into his shoulder. She was surprised at how willing she was to cry into him. She was also surprised at how he was treating her. He was being so gentle, and kind, and he was allowing her to cry into him. When she finally calmed down, she wiped her eyes and looked him in the face.

“No, you don’t need to apologize. I’m sorry for that, I don’t know what happened.” Sasuke shook his head at Sakura. She shouldn’t feel the need to apologize for having feelings and being upset.

“I’m sure if I was in your position, I would have done the same thing. Especially if you’ve been hiding your feelings from everyone. That would be a lot of emotions building up inside. I would know...” Sakura just nodded, she supposed that made sense. She smiled at Sasuke, who was gently taking hold of her left arm. He looked really upset, and somewhat guilty too. She hated to admit, that she was kind of glad that he felt guilty. “It looks so much worse...” She nodded a little. It was worse than the last time he’d seen her arm. A lot worse. It was four years worth of injuries. Three more than he would remember.

“After you left... It just kept happening.” She looked down in shame. He lifted her head up, knowing she was embarrassed. He could see it on her face. “I waited for you... I just couldn’t take the pain anymore. It hurt too much.” Sasuke felt guilty, he was part of the reason she had gotten so bad. He was part of the reason that she was here, in the hospital. He was part of the reason that she had become suicidal, and he hated that. He just wanted her to get better. All he cared about right now was her happiness and well-being. It was all that mattered.

“I should have stayed. I’m sorry I didn’t.” Sakura was shocked. Ever since he’d gotten back she hadn’t actually heard him say anything about regretting his decision to leave. He might have said it during the time that she wasn’t talking to him, but she wasn’t sure. Although, both Ino and Naruto HAD said he’d been apologetic. Ino even said that he had said that he missed her.

“Why didn’t you?” Sasuke faltered for a moment, not exactly sure what to say. He thought for a moment, looking for the right words. He decided there was really only one way to say what he needed to say. And there was no real easy way to say it.

“I don’t know... I just wanted power. I wanted revenge... And I didn’t care who I hurt... To get the revenge I was looking for...” He trailed off, not sure what else to say at this point. While at the same time, he had a million things to say. And half of those million things were apologies to everyone. Especially the girl sitting in front of him at this very moment.

“But what about everything you said? Everything you did? Pretending to care that I was cutting myself? Pretending to care that I was depressed?” He shook his head at Sakura, that wasn’t what happened. He actually did care about her. Even back then. He always cared. About all of them.

“I wasn’t pretending to care-”

“If you truly cared, you wouldn’t have left!” Sasuke knew she had a point, but she was wrong. He did care, then and now. He cared a lot about her, and he wasn’t going to make the mistake he made last time. “So go ahead, leave again, I don’t care.” She pulled her arm away from him, and turned her head to face the wall. He put his hand over hers.

“No. I’m not leaving this time. I made a mistake last time, and I’ll be damned if I make the same mistake twice.” She turned her head, and he looked her in the eyes. “I’m not leaving this time. I’m going to make sure you get better. Even if it means I have to move in with you. Though I’d prefer you come to me. Not as many bad memories for you there.” She looked at him in shock.

“You mean that?” He nodded at her.

“You’re my teammate and my friend. Friends help friends, do they not?” She smiled a little at him and nodded. He smiled back at her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... Yeah... That happened... I'm sorry I'm so so sorry I have no excuse. My life has gone through some hectic changes but this was already written I literally have excuse for this and I'm so freaking sorry. I love all of you who waited so patiently for this. I hope it didn't disappoint!

**Author's Note:**

> So, that's chapter one. I hope those of you who stuck around aren't too mad at me :p I've had this for so long and I just... I'd like to share it. And I love comments, so please feel free to leave them. I promise I won't bite :)


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